The Man with Birds is a poetic account of a transition – the passage from one season to another, from winter to spring, but also of the handing over from one generation to another. A freezing little boy is bravely battling his way through the snow to gather wood when he meets some strange birds whose colourful plumages raise hope that spring is nigh. The birds are perched on the hat of a man, who ushers in the new season at the very slow pace of a weary pensioner. The boy resolves to pick up the slack; he takes one of the birds to the mountain-top where he lives in order to free the house and his family from the harsh grips of winter. … Flowers and the rebirth of nature bring a burst of colours, splashing life where there had been just grey sky and a blanket of white snow. Animated using colourful flat tints with precise black outlines almost like a cartoon style, this short graduation film tells the joyful and eternal story of rebirth and new beginnings, as represented by the coming of spring … But it is also the story of a transmission, nicely symbolised by the old man giving a child his hat on which the birds nest, thus making the boy the new man with birds…
