A few years ago, if you had asked me about the short film categories at the Oscars, my response probably wouldn’t have been very positive. However, thanks to some well chosen additions to its voting members, the Academy has made noticeable improvements – especially in the Best Animated Short Film category. Once dominated by major studios, recent years have seen a rise in independent productions breaking through to the nominee stage. While the winners have remained somewhat predictable, could 2025 be the year a festival favourite takes the prize? We’ve already spoken with the directors of Wander to Wonder and Yuck!, two strong contenders in this year’s race. Now, we’re joined by another: Nicolas Keppens, the filmmaker behind Beautiful Men. One of my standout shorts from the 2024 festival circuit, Beautiful Men explores male insecurities in a fresh and unexpected way – marking Keppens’ first foray into stop-motion animation.
[The following interview is also available to watch at the end of this article.]
As the film isn’t yet available online, can you introduce the plot of Beautiful Men and share where the idea for the story came from?
Yeah, of course. Beautiful Men is a short film about three balding brothers going to Istanbul to get a hair transplant. While there, they stay together in a hotel, and small troubles and emotions that they’ve been bottling up for a long time start to surface because of them being there together and also their situation of trying to solve their insecurities.
I wanted to talk about a type of man that felt closer to how I feel, something more tender than what I’ve seen in films.
The idea came to me when I was in Istanbul in 2018 for work. I stayed in a hotel that worked with a hair clinic, and one morning at breakfast, I saw a room full of bald men. It was really silent, not what you’d expect from a room full of men on a trip. You could feel the tension in the air because these men were there to try to solve their insecurities. It was a very touching thing to see. Since my brother and I are both balding, I could relate to it in a way. I wanted to talk about a type of man that felt closer to how I feel, something more tender than what I’ve seen in films. It’s not about doing something entirely new but rather looking for a tender image of manhood showing all the insecurities.
The film is a beautiful piece of storytelling – touching and tender, but also with a surreal humour running through it. Comedy seems to be a recurring element in your work. How did you balance the tenderness and emotions with the comedic moments in this film?
It’s not something I do on purpose or that I’m looking for a balance. When I try to tell stories I think that’s just the tone that comes out naturally when I make something. Life is full of small dramas, but it’s also full of surreal, absurd humour. Even in the most horrifying moments in our life there are funny things – maybe not for you but for people seeing it.
Beautiful Men tells a very specific story, but at its core, it’s very relatable – dealing with themes like insecurity and vulnerability.
I think it’s a more tender way to look at insecurities and images that are often very present in being human and maybe more particularly in being a man. It’s not ‘the’ image or that my image is more common, it’s just an alternative to all the possible images that we could make of manhood.
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Let’s talk about the visual style of Beautiful Men Your previous films Wildebeest and Easter Eggs were 2D animation, but Beautiful Men is stop motion. What made you want to make that transition for this story?
At the beginning, Beautiful Men was also a 2D project because it’s what I was used to making. But when we got production funding, I rewrote the story with a script coach, and suddenly the story became more about loneliness and insecurities, but also how tactile the skulls and the people in the film were. Of course, it’s possible to do in 2D but when I tried a lot of things I found that when I was sculpting it was way easier for me to make an image that spoke to itself about loneliness. The silicone skulls really represent the skin of the bald main characters so we changed because the story changed and I was looking for the best medium to tell it which was at that time for me stop motion.
When I tried a lot of things I found that when I was sculpting it was way easier for me to make an image that spoke to itself about loneliness.
And how did you find the transition from 2D to stop motion?
It was amazing, I really liked doing it. Stop motion is a more physical way of telling stories – you’re not just behind a computer, you’re building sets and working closely with the animators. Also, the fact that we were obliged to come together to make the film. When you make a 2D film people can be in their own separate rooms and send in the animation they’ve made, that’s not possible with stop motion. When you tell stories in a team being collaborative, sharing ideas and making decisions together is still the best way to work. It makes the film richer because of the people talking to each other more easily.
I know that a lot of people share my love of the character design in Beautiful Men. Can you provide some insight into how you arrived at the final designs for the three brothers and how you made the puppets?
I made some sketches in the beginning, but very soon I saw that I needed to make it in 3D to really work. So I sculpted the brothers in Blender, and then the 3D prints went to a company in the Netherlands that makes puppets for stop motion and they started to work with the prints. I tried a lot of things and it was Koen and Bart that were the first characters I managed to do. I was inspired by the sculptures of Fernando Botero, an Italian sculptor and painter, who makes these round figures with round heads, small eyes and small features in big round faces. I was looking through this book of Botero and I thought, “Oh, that would work with the bald heads”, because you really want to caress these characters because their heads are so round. That was more or less the start for the characters.
Another element of the film I’m interested in is the fog. What was the decision behind including that in the story?
The fog is something that came from different reasons. One reason is that when the film was in 2D before we moved to stop motion it was less about loneliness, so the brothers were visiting Istanbul together and having an adventure there. But then when it became a stop motion film, making the streets of Istanbul in sets would have been super expensive so I thought, well, why not have this element of fog that makes it unnecessary?
Then also I wanted to talk about the brothers not being able to push the story forward. Each time something has to evolve in the story, they are not able to do it, which is a bit of a contrast with a lot of films that are very plot driven. And so I was thinking, what if I have this kind of deus ex machina element where every time they are not able, there is something like the fog that helps them? For instance, when Steven doesn’t dare to talk to Bart about his problems or the problem of not having a reservation, there is the fog making the space more abstract where the hammam also becomes the outside and vice versa. The fire is also just the fog coming into the hotel, which is a way of saying, OK, even at the end they didn’t make a decision and still there are not enough reservations, we have to have a solution and then there is the fog. So the fog helps to progress the story because the main characters are not able to do it.
I wanted to talk about the brothers not being able to push the story forward.
And how did you create it from a production standpoint?
It’s a very simple trick. In some shots where the characters are not animated, we just use smoke machines. And in the shots where there is animation, I built an infinity wall that gives the impression that there is no ground or a wall either and then I just put a white filter over it. That’s the trick, very cheap.
The film has been nominated for an Oscar and I know from following your Instagram that you’ve been preparing with with limo trips and champagne drinking. But on a more practical note, what has this Academy Award recognition meant for you?
It’s a funny thing, because when you’re a kid when you think about making films and you’re not doing it, you think about an Oscar and the day you start making films, you never think about it anymore until the day it happens that you get nominated. It’s like when you’re a good singer as a kid, you think about being the new Billie Eilish and then you get a career in singing and you understand that I’m not Billie Eilish, but I’m doing my thing. Then one day by doing your thing, you maybe get a Grammy Award and you can sit in the room with Billie Eilish. It’s a strange thing because it’s the first time in years that I’ve thought about an Oscar. Yeah. But yeah, it’s something that I can’t really believe that I know seeing movies about it. I’m super curious to see what it’s like to be over there but I have no clue!
What’s next for you after the Oscars? Any future projects you can share?
So I’m working on a short film which is called Trompe L’oeil. It’s more in the style and tone of Easter Eggs but maybe with a more complex narrative. I’m also working on the script and the visual elements for a feature film which for the moment is called False Hero. It’s kind of a comedy horror based in Norway again with people, maybe a bit like Beautiful Men, travelling to Norway and getting into trouble in the woods over there. It’s exciting going step by step and seeing where it brings me. I really like trying to tell a longer story too, it’s almost another medium but it’s great.
