I Am So Proud Of You is a 2008 animated short film by Don Hertzfeldt. It is the second chapter of a planned three-part story about the character Bill and continues the dark and philosophical humor of the first film, Everything Will Be OK.
In this chapter, Bill's recovery is haunted by the apparently genetic inevitability of his mental illness, and the lack of control over his own fate. The sudden death of a loved one casts a further shadow over his recovery. The short suggests "simultaneous" connections throughout time, through his strange family history, his childhood, the present, and his (possibly imagined) old age. The theme of lacking control in life and death is underscored by the subtle use of the elements of nature in many of the story's anecdotes: the ocean swallows his half-brother, fires consume a distant relative, electrical bolts are seen in the mind of his grandmother, another relative was known to eat mud (earth), and clouds (air) are used to illustrate the short's sequence about time.[1]
The film has won 27 film festival awards, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay at the Fargo Film Festival and the Golden Starfish Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival.[2]
Chris Robinson, author and director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival described the film as, "A masterpiece. I can’t even begin to articulate my thoughts about the film but it just gave me shivers and I wasn’t able to attend the party after the screening. Just had to be alone. It had this effect on a number of other people here too. Stunning, beautiful, tragic, absurd work."[3]
Filmmaker David Patrick Lowery wrote, "I Am So Proud Of You is, I think, as good a pick as any for film of the year. Certainly as good as Synecdoche, NY, and just as full of grand and complex thoughts about life and death and bodily fluids and years rapidly advancing, coming to ends and beginnings, back and forth, over and over, until one slips indistinguishably into the next." [4]
Hertzfeldt traveled with the film on a sold-out special theatrical tour of his work in 2008 and part of 2009; it is also playing in film festivals. The DVD was released in August 2009.