A group of fishermen on a precariously balanced platform fight over a trunk.

Directed by: Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein, Germany, 1989. Academy Award for Best Animated Short (1990).

The setting is on a floating platform where a group of evenly and carefully placed men live. Each man is aware that the platform is not stable and in order not to fall to their deaths, they maintain a careful balance of weight to prevent the platform from tipping too far and cause them all to fall. This reasonably harmonious understanding is lost when one man pulls up a heavy trunk. In the ensuing struggle, balance is lost in more than one sense.

Written by Kenneth Chisholm

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096880

This description is from the short film’s original source, which can be found here: Balance