Daughters of the Late Colonel
A nine-minute animated short that lands at Cannes 2026 and actually justifies its entire runtime. Daughters of the Late Colonel adapts Katherine Mansfield's 1920 modernist story—a deceptively quiet masterpiece about two middle-aged sisters who've spent their lives under their father's thumb, and what happens when he's gone and they're left to figure out who they are without him.
What actually happens in this film
The sisters are adrift. Their father—ill-tempered, controlling, the kind of man who organized everything around his demands—has died. You'd think that'd be freedom. Instead, it's paralyzing. They don't know how to move through a world that was always arranged around him. Then someone arrives, unexpected, and something shifts. Just like that.
The film's described as merry, rude, and lyrical all at once, which sounds contradictory until you sit with it—and realize that's exactly how grief and freedom can coexist. Mansfield knew this. Her 1920 story works through what's left unsaid, through small gestures and deflections rather than any dramatic confrontation. The sisters don't have big speeches. They move carefully, like people who learned not to take up space.
Animation is the right medium for this. It can externalize interior states in ways live-action struggles with—a room that feels smaller than it is, a figure that hesitates because hesitation has become muscle memory. There's something almost absurdist here, a dark comedy of manners that Mansfield herself understood perfectly. Don't expect plot mechanics. Expect mood, texture, and a final beat that stays with you.
Why this short landed at Cannes (and what that actually means)
Director Elizabeth Hobbs made this film. She's a British animator whose work occupies a specific corner of the animation world—one where illustration style and literary ambition meet without either flinching. It's produced by Animate Projects and Fabian&Fred, and it premiered as part of the Short & Medium Length Films selection in the 58th Directors' Fortnight lineup at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.
Here's what matters: Directors' Fortnight isn't a consolation prize. It's a fiercely curated program that has historically launched careers and championed work the main competition overlooks. Being selected here—especially for animation—signals that programmers saw something worth protecting and promoting.
As of now, there are no aggregated critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. That's normal for a festival short this early in its run. Letterboxd has it catalogued with crew details, but audience ratings are sparse. Hard to say if streaming deals are already negotiated or if this follows the slower festival-circuit path most animation shorts take before landing on a platform. What's clear: Cannes selection at this level is a meaningful signal—Animate Projects has a track record of supporting work that finds its audience, even if that takes a year or two.
Where to watch it right now
Daughters of the Late Colonel is currently available on major OTT services, which is genuinely unusual for a festival short at this stage. For a live, up-to-date list of exactly which platforms have it this week—because that genuinely changes week to week—Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker aggregates streaming availability across Netflix, Prime Video, and others in real time. Worth searching specifically rather than waiting for an algorithm to surface it (short films slip through the cracks of standard platform search tools constantly). The nine-minute runtime makes it perfect for a platform's curated short-film section rather than sitting in a main browse row anyway.
Why this matters if you care about literary adaptation
What strikes me about this project is how much emotional territory Hobbs covers in nine minutes. That constraint is a discipline—it forces you to trust the audience, to let images carry weight that a feature might hand off to dialogue or backstory exposition. Mansfield's original story is itself a masterclass in compression. It operates through what isn't said, through the sisters' careful movements and small deflections.
Animation suits this approach in ways live-action might not. The visual language can show you what the sisters are feeling without them ever stating it directly. I keep thinking about how the film describes itself as both merry and rude—there's something almost comedic in their situation, a wry smile underneath the grief. Not everyone will buy that tonal balance. The Cannes programmers clearly did.
The lyrical quality mentioned in the materials points toward something closer to a prose poem than a conventional narrative short. It's the kind of work that earns a second watch—once for the story, once to notice what the animation is doing underneath it. If you're a fan of Mansfield's writing, or of animation that takes literary source material seriously rather than just borrowing a title, this one's worth your time.
FAQ
Q: Is this a true story?
No. It's an adaptation of a modernist short story by Katherine Mansfield, published in 1920. The story is fiction, though it draws on the psychological and social dynamics of its era—particularly around patriarchy and women's repressed independence.
Q: How long is it?
Nine minutes. Part of the Short & Medium Length Films selection at 2026 Cannes Directors' Fortnight.
Q: Who made it?
Directed by Elizabeth Hobbs. Produced by Animate Projects and Fabian&Fred.
Q: Has it won awards yet?
Not yet. It premiered at Cannes in 2026, so awards consideration at subsequent animation and short-film festivals is likely still ahead of it.
Q: Where can I actually watch this?
Major OTT services. Check Movie OTT for the current breakdown by platform—they update it as availability changes.
The bottom line
Nine minutes. That's what you're committing to, and it's a fair trade. Daughters of the Late Colonel is the kind of short that doesn't waste a single frame. If you've read Mansfield before or you're drawn to animation that trusts its audience—go watch it. Most streaming services have it right now. Movie OTT makes finding it easy, so there's no excuse to let it slip past you.
