Propelled by a jarring, lyrical aesthetic, Aphasia pulls viewers into a disconcerting sensory experience. This striking and unsettling debut professional animated short by Marielle Dalpé is a deeply moving foray into the heart of aphasia—a devastating neurocognitive condition that progressively destroys the ability to speak and understand words, afflicting many people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Aphasia is a non-narrative short film that illustrates the language and speech disorders brought on by brain degeneration in people with Alzheimer’s disease. The film aims to reproduce the experience of aphasia for the audience. To that end, language dysfunction is represented by the changes in a portrait affected by audio and visual interferences, until it becomes completely unrecognizable.

Director Biography

A graduate of Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Marielle Dalpé has dedicated herself to multiple forms of expression, ranging from illustration to animation, multimedia installation to theatrical stage design. Her animated films have been seen at numerous events in Quebec, France and China. A finalist in the 2017 edition of the NFB’s Cinéaste recherché(e) contest, she received a special mention at the pitch competition held at the Cinémathèque québécoise’s Sommets du cinéma d’animation in 2020. Her animated short Aphasia (2023), produced by the NFB, is an unsettling foray into the world of people with Alzheimer’s disease facing the loss of language.