One of the marvels of stop-motion animation is its capacity to marry the fantasy of cinema with the human love of crafts. Stop-motion can be made by children, at home, with action figures; or by Hollywood directors with blockbuster budgets. Stop-motion can go anywhere, from Halloween-town to Mr. Fox’s hole to the Other Mother’s house; but it almost always takes us somewhere far from our own world. Perhaps that is because the choice to make a stop-motion film is the choice to remind the audience with every frame: this is a fiction, a sculpted world, a fantasy. There is no escape from the fabrication of stop-motion.

That distance from reality just might makes stop-motion one of the more potent stylistic choices for exploring what makes us human. This is the question posed by Anomalisa, the new film from Charlie Kaufman. The trailer for Anomolisa was released today, and it opens with a stop-motion character walking through an airport, asking that question: “What is it to be human?”

Kaufman directed Anomalisa with Duke Johnson. The two have worked on the film since 2012, and at long last, we get our first real look at the film. The detail and attention required to create a stop-motion films generally leaves audiences in awe, and rightfully so, given the laborious nature of making such a picture. Combine that with the emotionally comprising storytelling and narrative magic of a Charlie Kaufman film, and it looks like Anomolisa will be something special.

David Thewlis narrates the trailer, which features a look at the stunning animation, accompanied by Thewlis’ rummaging through the existential bin of questions about what it means to be alive. Movies has always been about fabrication. Few have more clearly understood how to use an awareness of that fabrication better than Charlie Kaufman. There is something about Kaufman, making a stop-motion film about, from we see in this trailer, a realistic human drama, that rings every bell true.

Follow The Stake on Twitter and Facebook