A conversation with filmmaker Seth McKeever about Alone, screened at Tallinn’s ANIMINIMIST animation festival
From September 3rd to 10th, 2026, Tallinn hosted the first edition of ANIMINIMIST, an international animation festival for children and young audiences. The festival featured a diverse selection of animated short films from around the world, offering viewers an opportunity to discover different artistic styles, stories, and perspectives.
I attended two screenings at the festival, where I discovered Alone, a short film by American filmmaker Seth McKeever. Set in a tropical jungle, the film shows a large green monster encountering a small winged dragon, who soon flies away, leaving the monster alone again.
I was struck by its artistic qualities and its exploration of loneliness and the longing for connection. The film raised a question that I wanted to explore further: what does it really mean to be alone? Is solitude necessarily a form of loneliness, or can being alone mean something entirely different?
Curious to learn more about the filmmaker's intentions and his personal understanding of solitude and loneliness, I contacted Seth McKeever, who kindly agreed to an interview.
Seth McKeever grew up in Cameroon and now lives and works in Philadelphia, where he creates hand-drawn cel animation and also teaches. He describes his chosen technique as an “arduous analogue world”—a demanding and time-consuming process in which each drawing must be made by hand.
Seth has been fascinated by animals, particularly lizards and dinosaurs, since his childhood in West Africa. After making live-action short films for some time, he realized that the stories he wanted to tell were better suited to creatures than human characters. For Seth, animation is closely connected with the qualities of childhood: curiosity, innocence, and the desire to learn, explore, and create. These are qualities that many people lose touch with as they grow older, but which he continues to embrace through his work.
Seth began working on the film in 2016, although he had drawn its main character several times before. He acknowledges that the large green monster is, in fact, a reflection of himself: “I mean, he’s me. It’s pretty obvious.”
Having lived and travelled in different countries, he had made friends around the world, but constant departures often separated them. The idea of the film emerged partly from this experience of friendship and separation. “Part of it symbolizes having a friend, and then the friend leaves, and you don’t have your friend anymore,” he explains.
Alone
