Animation & Motion Design
Patrick Morrissey
Suvla Bay
This short film tells a story set at the beginning of the August Offensive at Suvla Bay in the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. The conflict was fought primarily between the defending Ottoman Turks and the attacking Anzac troops (soldiers from Australia and New Zealand).
This story specifically is a fictional one of troops in the first landing craft to arrive to storm the beach and Turkish defences at Suvla Bay. The characters, to whom we are introduced in the beginning, encounter the true nature of war; the brutality, the futility, and the pointlessness.
It is narrated by the central character, a young man in the landing craft. His attitude towards that in which he is about to partake is naïve, overly romanticised, and saturated with the platitudes of the state’s wartime propaganda.
Suvla Bay is an anti-war story which is not necessarily exclusively about Gallipoli, or even the first world war itself. The time and location of the story is simply a vehicle to express a broader sentiment of opposition to the wars waged by the governments of the world and the lies told to convince others to kill and die at their behest.