Why animator Serafima Serafimova made a COVID-19 film in 2024

The animated short The C Word asks audiences to sit with their discomfort and reflect on the lasting impact of COVID-19. Director Serafima Serafimova shares the personal story behind the film, which was recently screened at the Brighton International Animation Festival.

By 2024, most of us had mentally closed the book on COVID-19, but for London-based director and animator Serafima Serafimova, one conversation changed everything. Her latest short film, The C Word, which screened at the BAFTA-qualifying Brighton International Animation Festival this year, invites viewers to revisit the pandemic through the eyes of Alyssa, a frontline medical worker whose experience reveals just how far the world still has to go in processing its collective trauma.

“Like much of the world, I was still trying to shake off the lingering trauma of COVID-19 and focus on the future,” Serafima says. “Then I met Alyssa. She’d served on the frontlines in one of London’s largest hospitals and had been through hell. She’d witnessed hundreds of people die in front of her. She would never be the same.”

The meeting struck a nerve and happened at just the right time, as Serafima had been craving a personal project and found herself deeply moved by Alyssa’s story. She knew she wanted to make something that honoured the experience without sensationalising it, so she took a four-week sabbatical from her role at ethical agency Nice and Serious, where she’s worked for over 15 years, to begin crafting the film.

“Just as the world is trying to move on, I want to ask people to sit with the discomfort for a few minutes,” she says. “To feel what Alyssa felt, and to remember that for some, it will never truly be over.”

To bring Alyssa’s story to life, Serafima turned to rotoscoping, a technique that allows her to work solo while combining her fine art background with film. After editing a two-hour interview into a concise, focused narrative, she assembled visuals using a mix of stock footage and original shots.

These were then painstakingly animated in Photoshop at 12 frames per second, with each frame containing five hand-drawn layers. All in all, the film required more than 9,800 individual drawings.

Visually, The C Word is stripped back but deeply expressive. Working largely in monochrome, Serafima introduced a muted blue tone as the only colour throughout, a subtle but consistent nod to the NHS and the emotional weight it represents.

“It’s not just a nod to the NHS,” she explains. “It carries the weight of responsibility, grief, and trauma that Alyssa still lives with every day.”

The sound design, too, is layered with care. Rather than defaulting to dramatic crescendos, Serafima employs reverb and a low, pulsating throb to mirror the disquiet that underlies Alyssa’s words. Atmospheric vocals blend into the mix, blurring the boundary between memory and reality.

Despite the gravity of the subject matter, the film is driven by a sense of quiet urgency. There are no grand statements, only a steady invitation to pause, reflect, and remember. That tone is deliberate. Serafima resisted the impulse to generalise or editorialise, keeping the film tightly focused on Alyssa.

“I made a conscious decision to avoid anything sensationalist,” she says. “Because she was what truly mattered.”

In a culture that often prefers to look away, The C Word offers a powerful reminder that the pandemic’s emotional fallout is far from over. For some, forgetting is a privilege. For others, memory is a weight they carry daily.

Serafima hopes the film will resonate not only with those who share Alyssa’s experience but with anyone willing to sit still long enough to acknowledge it. The film has already screened at the Edinburgh Short Film Festival and is continuing its journey on the festival circuit. But more than accolades, Serafima is focused on connection.

“I often get a strong urge to create personal work – to tell stories that matter to me in the hope that they will move people in some way,” she says.

With The C Word, she’s done exactly that. Through thousands of hand-drawn frames, Serafima has found a way to say what words alone can’t: that remembrance is not just about the past but about how we choose to move forward.

Not only that, but the film demonstrates how we might begin to change the way we think about COVID-19, trauma, and the stories we choose to avoid.