Growing Pains is an animated short film that explores the anxiety and uncertainty surrounding death. Through its gentle visuals and ethereal atmosphere, it aims to quell the common grief associated with losing a beloved person or place as one grows up and moves on. Influenced by the melancholic aesthetics of illustrator and animator Holly Warburton, the film follows a young girl as she experiences constant loss due to the unrelenting passage of time: her grandmother, her childhood home, her youth, her own mother, and eventually herself. Despite its themes surrounding death, Growing Pains does not wish for its audience to wallow in existential dread, but instead aims to inversely portray a fear of death as an immense love for life.
