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Ways to Soar and Fall

Ways to Soar and Fall is an observational short that interrogates the ethics of looking. It considers how contemporary society frames, records and judges moments of human instability, asking where compassion ends, where spectatorship begins, and whether the longing to be seen has itself become one of the defining conditions of modern urban life.

Screeching gulls draw attention to an agitated man walking on a tower block roof. Passers-by gather in the streets below. A spectacle acquires its own momentum. Swagger, humour, defiance are displayed, transforming a moment of potential catastrophe into a public performance.

Observed through the perspective of an emotionally detached witness, the film places the paternal and territorial instincts of the gulls alongside the equally instinctive human appetite to be witnessed. The protagonist appears to pursue visibility above all else, treading the boundary between vulnerability, performance and the public consumption of crisis.

  • Minna Väisänen
    Director
  • Paul Hayes
    Writer
  • Bi/etterminds .
    Producer
  • Johnny La Rock
    Music
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short, Web / New Media
  • Runtime:
    2 minutes 28 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 4, 2026
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Finland
  • Country of Filming:
    Finland
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Minna Väisänen

Minna Väisänen is a Finnish director and visual artist working at the intersection of comics, animation, and digital media. Using mixed media, photography, vector graphics, and AI-generated imagery, she brings stories to life with striking visuals. In collaboration with Paul Hayes as Bi/etterminds, she transforms their comics into animations that explore memory, identity, isolation, and the unseen forces shaping everyday life

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Director Statement

The origins of Ways to Soar and Fall lie in an incident witnessed by writer Paul Hayes during his morning commute. What first appeared to be a potential tragedy gradually revealed itself as two simultaneous dramas: nesting gulls fiercely protecting their young, and a man whose calculated defiance transformed a moment of crisis into a public performance observed by an increasingly anxious crowd.

Paul recounted the experience to me and shared several photographs he had taken at the scene. Together we developed the material into a comic, initially intended as a storyboard. As we worked, it became clear that the images were communicating something beyond the incident itself. They seemed to expose a collision between instinct and spectacle, between creatures acting purely to protect life and people irresistibly drawn towards an unfolding public drama.

That realisation became the starting point for the film. Rather than reconstructing the event as a factual account, I chose to animate it as an observational reflection on the ethics of looking. The film embraces ambiguity, resisting psychological explanation in favour of examining how contemporary urban life turns moments of uncertainty into shared performances. While the gulls defend unseen lives without audience or self-consciousness, the humans below instinctively become spectators, participants and commentators.

Ways to Soar and Fall asks where compassion ends and spectatorship begins. It is less interested in what happened on that rooftop than in what the event reveals about our collective need to watch, interpret and be seen.