Adelaide Film Festival review: Maya, Give Me a Title
Oct 24, 2025, updated Oct 24, 2025
A quirky celebration of childlike wonder, Maya Give Me a Title is a charming, stop-motion adventure, dedicated to creativity and connection. Directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and made in collaboration with his daughter, Maya, this French-made animated feature transforms a simple father-daughter ritual into a playful, heartfelt cinematic experiment, one that is brimming with humour, moments of surrealism and warmth.
While living in different countries and seemingly worlds apart, Gondry connects with his daughter each evening by asking her to “give me a title”. From these prompts, he crafts a series of whimsical short stories, each starring Maya as the main protagonist.
Under what Gondry calls the “triangle of animation,” Maya gives her father a title, he animates the story, and her mother reads the narration. It’s a family project full of love and a way of bridging physical distance through shared creativity.
Gondry’s choice of cut-out stop-motion animation, intercut with real-life footage of Maya, playfully captures the wild, boundless energy of a child’s imagination. The film’s style is colourful, imperfect, and uniquely handcrafted with jagged paper edges, misspelled words, layered textures, and visible glue marks. This tactile, DIY aesthetic adds authenticity and intimacy, making Maya Give Me a Title feel like a living scrapbook.
Throughout the film, Maya appears in an ever-changing cast of roles: Maya the Mermaid, Maya the Hero, Maya the Photojournalist, Maya the Deceptive Policewoman. Each scenario is more delightful and outrageous than the last, showcasing Maya’s limitless imagination and Gondry’s signature playful visual storytelling.
The film overflows with ridiculous and lovable characters: from hammock-stealing squirrels to sardine thieves, life-saving cats and more. Each short is a burst of joy, reflecting a child’s sense of logic where anything can happen and often does.
In one standout adventure, Maya strikes a deal with the King of Belgium to dump 250 billion French fries into the sea to absorb a massive ketchup spill, her actions preventing an ecological disaster. “Fries love ketchup and ketchup loves fries,” she explains. Maya is both a creator and a participant in this world, and Gondry’s animation brings her surreal logic vividly to life.
With a runtime of just 61 minutes, the film admirably avoids feeling repetitive. The pacing is tight, and the regular intercuts of real-life Maya not only refresh the viewer’s eye but deepen the emotional core of the film. These glimpses of Maya’s ‘real’ personality remind us that behind the colourful madness is a child who is funny, thoughtful, and endlessly imaginative.
Maya Give Me a Title is a film that will resonate across generations. For kids, it’s a wildly entertaining ride; for adults, it’s a nostalgic, often touching reminder of how art and storytelling can connect us. Maya’s wacky titles act as fuel for Gondry’s creative engine. His use of scissors, Scotch tape, coloured paper, and a camera proves that imagination doesn’t need a big budget, just a little bit of heart.
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Maya, Give Me A Title is screening on Saturday October 25 as part of the Adelaide Film Festival
This review was provided by the ‘2025 Emerging Screen Critics Program’ – a Screen Studies collaboration between the Adelaide Film Festival and UniSA Creative, with the participation of students and mentors from the University of South Australia, the University of Adelaide and Flinders University. Supported by InReview.