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The Epic of Enkidu

When the catastrophic king Gilgamesh meets the grass-fed Enkidu, things don't go according to the clay tablets. A fractured take on the cuneiform tale, featuring doom, despair, deception, and sheep.

  • Mike A Smith
    Director
    Cooped (2014), Missionary (2005), Hominid (2004)
  • John Morgan Askew
    Music
  • Jason T Edwards
    Sound Design
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Short
  • Genres:
    Adventure, Comedy, Mythology, Cartoon, Nature, Mesopotamia
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes 26 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    December 5, 2025
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • Animayo International Film Festival
    Gran Canaria
    Spain
    May 7, 2026
    Official Selection
  • ASIFA-East Animation Festival
    New York, NY
    United States
    May 22, 2026
    1st PLACE INDEPENDENT FILM
  • Nevada City Film Festival
    Nevada City, CA
    United States
    June 28, 2026
    Official Selection
  • Los Angeles Animation Festival
    Los Angeles, CA
    United States
    December 7, 2025
    JUDGES SPECIAL AWARD FOR STORY IN 2D
  • Sea Slug Animation Festival
    Seattle, WA
    United States
    February 28, 2026
    BEST OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
  • Golden Kuker-Sofia International Animated Film Festival
    Sofia
    Bulgaria
    May 9, 2026
    Official Selection
  • Portland Panorama Film Festival
    Portland, OR
    United States
    April 18, 2026
    Official Selection
  • Chitkara Animation Festival
    Rajpura, Punjab
    India
    March 13, 2026
    Official Selection
  • Athens Animfest
    Athens
    Greece
    April 18, 2026
    Official Selection
  • Flagstaff International Film Festival
    Flagstaff, AZ
    United States
    August 2, 2026
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Mike A Smith

Mike first began animating as a kid with a borrowed Super 8 camera and some plasticine. Since then, he's dug his way into a career in archaeology, thrown away a mountain of bad drawings, and made hand-drawn shorts including The Epic of Enkidu (2025), Cooped (2014), and Missionary (2005). From 2009 to 2011, Mike served as president of ASIFA Portland, the Pacific Northwest chapter of the international animation society.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

This project began as a Fractured Fairy Tale-style goof on the Epic of Gilgamesh. Modern retellings of myth from the perspectives of secondary characters (Madeline Miller's Circe or John Gardner's Grendel) sparked the idea. Paging through books on ancient Mesopotamia became a comfortable rabbit hole.

The 4,000-year-old source material describes the chest-pounding friendship between the tyrannical king Gilgamesh and the wilderness-raised Enkidu. When the hubris of the two results in Enkidu’s death, Gilgamesh undertakes a despondent, doomed search for the secret of immortality. The Epic of Enkidu presents a glumly slapstick take on this, wondering what might have been lost in those broken clay tablets. Could Enkidu really leave the wilderness behind? Was Gilgamesh bright enough to understand what was going on?

It took some time to find the final image of the film, to realize that I couldn't get it out of my head, and to make that ending a beacon for several long years of production. The finished work is meant as a fractured paean to cuneiform, the animal kingdom, and what it is to be mortal.