Left Lane Straight
Motion design for a documentary thirty years in the making, about a Sephardic Jewish family's survival in occupied Greece.
Animation
Motion Design
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Director Caroline Kaye began filming her family as a teenager and spent thirty years building Left Lane Straight into a feature documentary about her grandparents' survival during the Bulgarian occupation of Greece. One of the scarcely known stories of WW2 and the Holocaust, it follows a Sephardic Jewish community in northern Greece and the impossible choices forced on them by the war.
Caroline's own artistic practice, including handsewn maps, collages, and family trees, became central to the visual language of the film. My job was to bring that tactile, handcrafted quality into motion: animated maps, timelines, lower thirds, transitions, and reveals.
Introductions
The documentary is centered around the history and relationship of “Nona” and “Nono” the director Caroline Kaye’s grandparents and their large extended family. To introduce everyone in relationship to the principal characters, Caroline created custom stitch patterns for each family line. I was responsible for the overall design and animation of the lower thirds as well as all on-screen graphics for the film.
Family Trees
The war touched Nona and Nono's families in very different ways. That difference is a central tension of the film.
Maps
The family's story didn’t happen in isolation. These maps place their journey within the wider history of Jewish life across the Mediterranean, from the Ottoman Empire through occupation and emigration.
Signposts
Three locations mark major turning points in the family's story: Kavala in northern Greece, where Nona’s story begins; Drama, where Nono as the new head of the household moves his family; and eventually the United States, where they rebuilt.