A young boy and his father living in bitterly cold northeast China, survive in the wilderness by hunting for their food where strong connections develop with the forest and the wildlife in the region. Like the increasingly strained relationship between father and son, the thick winter snow resists melting with the coming change of seasons.

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First-time filmmaker, Guodong Yu, a grad student in Shanghai, China, and Bradley Hawkins met on Instagram when the two discovered that both of their films (Winter and Calf Rope) were declared winners at a film festival in Italy. The correspondence between the two developed and Hawkins soon discovered that the young college student did not have the financial means nor the experience to strategize the expensive venture of submitting his stunningly beautiful yet tragically dark animated film to any festivals in America. And so Hawkins took Guodong Yu under his wing and fully financed the submissions of 25 carefully targeted film festivals throughout the U.S. which resulted in 19 additional awards to the two that Guodong had earned on his own.

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Now that the film is no longer on the film festival circuit, enjoy the entire 8-minute animated short in the link above.