The animated film Fade – Fate explores the friendship between two comrades-in-arms that ends just as the film begins. One of the two is shot and killed in the war. Still in shock, the friend of the dying soldier begins experiencing flashbacks of their mutual experiences in the past. These flashbacks portray their friendship, marked by moments of happiness as well as episodes of conflict and rivalry. At the end of every flashback, a certain body part of the dying soldier begins to decompose and dissolve, a body part that had played a crucial role in that flashback.

In my short film, the decomposition process stands for the loss of beloved people and for transience. But the everlasting nature of a person in the memories of others is also explored in the film.

At the end of the film, one is brought back to the present. One sees a soldier, while all that remains of his comrade, who has reached the final stage of the decomposition process, is his gear. The surviving soldier comes to the realization that, although his friend is dead and has “disintegrated,” he will live on in eternity in his memories.

Sadet Muadini (b. 2000) currently attends the Federal Higher Technical Institute (HBLA) for Artistic Design in Linz and created this work as part of her diploma project, in which she explored the topic of decomposition and its depiction in the visual arts. With her animated film, she wants to offer an artistic and less gruesome view of this taboo subject. The acceptance of the transience and insignificance of human existence is the central theme that she addresses here. She drew the inspiration for the depicted war scenes from the collected stories of her family members who remained in their hometown.