La Maison en Petits Cubes

つみきのいえ

An elderly widower lives alone in a flooded town, stacking a new room atop his house each time the rising water swallows the floor below. When his pipe slips into the submerged levels, he rents diving gear and descends room by room into his own past, each sunken floor returning a memory of the life and family he once shared there. This wordless animated short by Kunio Kato won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.