Film Review: LUKI & THE LIGHTS
by Kathryn Loggins

Toby Cochran, United States, 2024

I immensely enjoy animated films and don’t see them as a medium mainly for kids. I believe that the simplest stories can have an immense impact, which LUKi & THE LIGHTSabsolutely had on me. Directed by Toby Cochran with a story by Sascha Groen and Anjo Snijders this short, animated film was created to support the families, caregivers, and children of loved ones living with ALS. The story follows a chipper robot LUKi, who is enjoying his best life with his two friends when he starts to notice parts of his body are malfunctioning. When he goes to the doctor and is diagnosed with MLS his joyful resolve is tested to its core. He must choose how he is going to continue to live his life when faced with such a devastating illness. But through the love and support of his friends, he chooses to face his disease head on and learns to take joy in the small things in life and in the love he’s surrounded by.

This film is not only expertly animated, but it is also told without dialogue and only through sounds, so it can be viewed and understood by a global audience. The design of Luki is also extremely clever, as his joints are represented by lights that slowly start to turn off as the disease progresses further. It’s a clear, albeit a heartbreaking visual of what ALS does to the human body. Anjo Snijders was diagnosed with ALS at the age of thirty-five in 2018 when his two children were young. He and his wife Sascha started looking for resources to explain this illness to their young children but didn’t find much, so they came up with the idea for LUKi & THE LIGHTS. This film moved me to tears and is such a testament to how art is not only a luxury but essential in helping us understand and make sense of our world and its hardships, and how we can get through them together.