One Rat Short (2006)

Plot:

Short Film One Rat Short follows the city rat in a strange world of white laboratory rats. Each rat has a bar code attached. It is clearly some type of experimental laboratory, where the rats are administered various substances and their performance measured! A typical town rat follows a cheese puff wrapper across the roof tops in a big city. By accident, the rat falls into some weird fully automated lab filled with white lab rats. The new rat is captured but with the intervention of the same wrapper, he is able to try to make his escape.

Short Film One Rat Short (2006) - Masterpiece of style, narrative and direction

It looks great--not too derivative, not too abstract or "cartoony," and definitely NOT like CGI. The surfaces are so real (fur, metal, glass) you feel like you can touch them, the contrasts between dark and light are expertly used, and the scene where the Cheeto is crushed in slow motion is simply beautiful. The music was perfectly suited to the action, almost another character in itself. And on top of it all, it has fast-paced suspense and a touching love story, with the right ending for a change (something far too many films featuring humans fail at).

Academy Award Nominated Short Film.

Directed by Alex Weil