Pretty much sums up my retirement plans. 2025 (98th) Academy Award nominations: Best Animated Short Film

Why wait and not just do those things now?

This was incredibly touching and sweet.

Life sometimes feels like a to-do list that grows faster than the time available to cross things off, and when the promise of calm finally appears, the body no longer responds with the same urgency as the mind. It’s in this delicate gap between expectation and finitude that “Retirement Plan” finds its strength, turning a seemingly mundane idea about retirement into a quietly devastating portrait of time passing. Directed by John Kelly, the short starts from a simple concept (Ray’s plans for life after work) and builds something far more layered. Domhnall Gleeson’s narration, restrained and almost matter-of-fact, lays out a list of intentions that blends late-blooming ambition with small course corrections: reading abandoned books, learning languages, taking better care of the body, slowing down. The text never reaches for grandeur, but it’s precisely this modesty that reveals the portrait of an ordinary life, lived at a pace too fast to allow real presence. Ray isn’t exceptional, and the film understands that this is exactly where its power lies. The animation leans into a strict, highly deliberate minimalism. The character’s movements are subtle, economical, almost limited, as if every gesture has to justify its existence. This formal choice isn’t just aesthetic, it physically translates the idea of a body that moves less while the mind keeps projecting more and more. By using his own body as a reference for the animation, Kelly creates a striking sense of authenticity, where every shift in posture carries emotional information. There’s no visual excess or obvious metaphor; everything is built from detail, from what’s nearly imperceptible. Thematically, “Retirement Plan” balances optimism and melancholy with intelligence. Ray imagines the future with enthusiasm, but interestingly avoids confronting extreme aging or loss of autonomy (death alone is acknowledged, treated with calm, almost practical acceptance). That omission speaks volumes: the film suggests we’re trained to plan achievements, not limitations. Retirement, then, becomes an ambiguous promise, both a second chance and a cruel reminder that the time to do everything was always shorter than it seemed. The short allows for multiple readings without pushing the viewer toward a single conclusion, which only deepens the experience. Using Dublin as a real, recognizable, everyday setting grounds the film in a concrete reality that contrasts with the protagonist’s daydreams. The real locations give weight to Ray’s fantasies, reinforcing that his dreams aren’t abstract, but rooted in a specific, ordinary, lived life. This blend of the personal and the universal is one of the short’s greatest strengths, allowing it to speak about aging, time, and frustration without feeling heavy or solemn. In the end, “Retirement Plan” stands as a film that’s small in runtime but big in resonance. Its Oscar nomination doesn’t come from immediate impact or flashy technical virtuosity, but from the precision with which it observes something deeply human: the illusion that there will always be a later moment to put everything in order. It’s a short that grows with time, precisely because it ages alongside its audience, gaining new layers as our own unfinished to-do lists keep getting longer.

“Retirement Plan” is a short film that doesn't waste a single second of its seven-minute runtime. The story about a man who ponders what he wants to do after his retirement is, above all, thought-provoking. The animation style is kept very simple but complements the narrative very well so that the storytelling and visual elements become inseparable. I particularly liked the very subtle aging of the main character, which is not so easy to portray in such a minimalist style. It may not be a masterpiece, but the few minutes that the film lasts are definitely time well spent.