Grounded

Name: New Zealand Film Commission
Price range: $

An award-winning animated short film about feeling stuck and the quiet power of emotional support.

New Zealand Production

Short 2026 Animation, Coming-of-Age 4 minutes

Left behind as others take flight, a young ladybug discovers that sometimes in life you need a helping hand… or eight.

Told without dialogue, Grounded is about feeling stuck and the quiet power of emotional support.

Chris Callus

Director / Animator / Writer / Producer / Compositor

Chris is an experienced animator and emerging director with over a decade of work across commercial, corporate and creative projects. Their credits include animating the short film Shmeat, which screened at Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival and was selected for New Zealand’s Best at the New Zealand International Film Festival. More recently, Chris animated an official fan-led music video for Ed Sheeran’s song Punchline. As a regular entrant in New Zealand’s 48Hours Film Competition, their animated entries have achieved multiple successes, including 2025’s Grand National Champion film Grounded.

Chris has a Bachelor of Design Innovation and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Psychology, with a particular interest in projects that support mental health, neurodiversity and the LGBTQIA+ community.

Adam Reynolds

Producer / Writer / Editor / Voice / Sound Design

Adam is an award-winning video editor and writer with a background in children’s television. He spent over half a decade working for Pukeko Pictures on international children’s animated shows Thunderbirds Are Go and Book Hungry Bears.

Adam also proudly co-wrote and produced three LGBTQIA+ children’s books (Promised Land series) which attracted major media attention (from the likes of Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Teen Vogue) and support from esteemed Hollywood performers Sir Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings) and George Takei (Star Trek).

Director's Statement

Much of my life has been filtered through a lens of anxiety. I reflect on opportunities I let slip, often internalising the belief that I wasn’t ready or good enough. Simultaneously, my successes have also been shaped by careful, time-intensive, anxiety-induced thought processes. Grounded holds these feelings in our frustrated yet endearing ladybird character, Bug, and their difficulty with flying. Bug’s journey reinforces that meaningful things can take time and it’s okay to progress differently from those around you.

I'm often guilty of defaulting to practical solutions for emotional problems that aren’t seeking answers, but simply need an empathetic ear. Our second character, Spider, follows this trajectory, offering well-intentioned but ultimately unhelpful spider-like solutions to a ladybird’s dilemma. It’s only after truly noticing Bug’s stress and providing calm reassurance that Spider is able to help Bug find inner peace and take flight on their own terms.

I wanted Grounded to be widely accessible through a non-dialogue, visual storytelling approach. Clean, minimal design choices keep the focus on our unlikely duo, while playful sound design and expressive music give the film energy and emotional weight. Grounded balances lightness with anxiety, inviting conversations around mental health, personal growth and supportive relationships.

Production Note

Grounded emerged from the filmmaker's own experiences with anxiety and particularly the feeling of being unable to move while life continues around you.

Originally created in just a single weekend as part of New Zealand’s Vista Foundation 48Hours film competition, the film was driven by instinct and honesty rather than visual polish. After going on to win the entire competition as Grand Champion, they decided to revisit Grounded with fresh eyes. Not to change its story, but to strengthen its visual language so it could stand confidently alongside other festival films. The team chose non-dialogue storytelling to create emotional accessibility. By telling the story through a ladybird and a spider, they aimed to remove barriers of age and language, allowing audiences to project themselves into the characters.

48Hours Grand Champion

The Vista Foundation 48Hours is New Zealand’s biggest guerrilla filmmaking competition and in 2025 over 450 teams competed nationwide to create a short film in just one weekend.

The winning film, Grounded, was crowned Grand Champion, recognising it as the best film in the entire country, with an international panel of esteemed judges including Sir Peter Jackson, Elijah Wood and Dame Gaylene Preston.

At the regional level of the competition, Grounded also won awards for Best Animation, Audience Favourite, and Letterboxd Best Poster.