Somewhere Green

Film Review

Written by Kineograph

A pigeon family crosses a grey city in search of somewhere green — and what they find, at the end of the journey, is a picture of the thing they were looking for.

A Title Written In Clouds

It opens beautifully: the words SOMEWHERE GREEN formed in cloud over grey rooftops, a pigeon in the foreground with its wings outstretched, as if the title itself were something the birds are reaching for. Then we are down on the ledges with them — a twig nest on a rooftop, three pigeons huddled together against the blur of the city, a white pigeon stretching a wing over the nest where the chick sits.

The creator describes the film with endearing plainness — a family of pigeons looking for somewhere green — and that is exactly the register the film works in. Nothing is explained. There is no villain, no chase, no speech about the environment. There is a nest, a family, and a city that goes on being grey in every direction.

Treasures

The middle of the film is domestic, and it is where the film wins you over. The parent sits with its back to us while the small round chick looks up at it, all eyes. A red bottle cap sits in the foreground of one shot like something precious — which, on a concrete rooftop, I suppose it is. These are the riches of this world: bottle caps, twigs, each other.

I should be honest about two distractions, because they are there. The chick’s body does not always obey the same design twice — late in the film it is briefly a round ball with a single visible eye — and the festival watermark sits doubled over most frames, gold text over green, an untidiness baked into the film itself rather than anything the player is doing. Neither ruins anything. Both feel like the marks of a film finished in a hurry, and a second pass would polish them away.

Best Scene (~4:30–4:40)

The Only Green In The World

What is coming is a vast, empty concrete parking lot. The postcard ends up lying on the ground between the parent and the chick, and the two of them stand over it and look at it: a picture of a green tree, the only green thing in the film.

They do not find somewhere green. I want to be clear about how well judged that is. A lesser film would have flown them over a park in the final shot and let everyone go home comforted. This one ends on two small birds looking at a photograph of the thing their world used to have — and reads, to me, as a film about how a picture of a lost world is not the world, no matter how carefully you carry it. Then: THE END, no softening. For a six-minute wordless short about cute pigeons, that is a genuinely brave place to stop.

Final Thoughts

Somewhere Green is a small, sad, beautifully simple fable: the green world has shrunk to the size of a postcard, and the birds still make the journey.

I would recommend it to families, to anyone who likes their animation gentle, and to anyone who thinks an environmental film needs speeches to land. This one lands with a picture of a tree, lying on concrete.

Scene Breakdown

0:03–0:15 — The title formed in clouds over grey rooftops; a pigeon from behind, wings outstretched.

~0:28 — A pigeon in a twig nest on a rooftop.

~1:00 — Three pigeons huddled together on a ledge, the city blurred behind them.

~2:00 — A white pigeon stretches a wing; an iridescent pigeon and the small chick in the nest.

~3:00 — The parent, back to camera; the chick looking up with huge brown eyes.

~3:30–4:00 — The parent facing camera, the chick beside it, a red bottle cap in the foreground.

~4:30–4:40 — Best Scene: the sunset flight — the postcard in the parent’s beak, the chick clinging underneath.

5:03–5:33 — The empty concrete parking lot. The postcard on the ground between them: the only green in the film.

A wordless film, told in music and ambient sound. The creator works under the name friendlyhuman1; no other name is public.