Photo Credit: Getty Images
Walt Disney Animation’s latest short film, Versa, is a moving testament to love, loss, and healing told through dance, music, and visual poetry. Directed by long-time Disney animator Malcon Pierce, the deeply personal project draws from his own heartbreaking experience — the loss of his infant son, Cooper — and transforms that pain into an extraordinary expression of remembrance and hope.
The film, which screens at the Animation Is Film Festival, follows a young couple on an emotional journey through love, grief, and renewal. What makes Versa unique is its storytelling approach: it is an abstract, cosmic dance of life told entirely through movement and music, without dialogue.
Pierce’s inspiration came from a very personal place. During the production of Moana, he and his wife Keely suffered the devastating loss of their son. “Every morning we’d come downstairs, all these little rainbows would be spread around the house from the little crystal star his grandmother gave us,” Pierce recalled. That crystal — now a cherished symbol of Cooper — became the emotional centerpiece of Versa.
The animator eventually shared his concept with Disney Animation Chief Creative Officer Jennifer Lee, presenting a slideshow of early ideas. Lee encouraged him to think deeply about perspective and connected him with veteran artist Paul Felix, who helped shape the visual direction. Felix created seven stunning concept paintings inspired by Pierce’s vision, bringing the ethereal world of Versa to life.
To express the emotional journey through motion, Pierce turned to ice dancing as the film’s core metaphor. Collaborating with world-class skaters and choreographers Katherine Hill and Ben Agosto, he explored how skating could embody the couple’s connection — their love, pain, and resilience. “There’s a moment where the dad skates around the mom and listens to their baby in her belly. That came from Ben and Kat,” Pierce shared, emphasizing how choreography added layers of meaning that words could never capture.
Composer Haim Mazar scored Versa using a 69-piece orchestra, blending sweeping strings and horns with nostalgic ‘90s synths. The music mirrors the couple’s evolving emotions, shifting from tenderness to heartbreak and finally to transcendence.
Pierce’s creative process was also influenced by Frozen 2 co-director Chris Buck, who introduced him to the book Permission to Mourn. Its reflections on how grief reshapes people resonated deeply. Pierce embraced the Japanese art of kintsugi — repairing broken pottery with gold — as a guiding metaphor for Versa: healing not by erasing pain, but by transforming it into beauty.
In one of the film’s most symbolic gestures, Pierce included his son’s name in the Moana credits as a “production baby,” marked with a star. “That star has been my North Star for all of this,” he says.
Through Versa, Malcon Pierce channels unimaginable sorrow into something universal — a shimmering reminder that grief does not end love; it deepens it. The film stands as both a tribute to his son and a message of hope: that even in the cracks of heartbreak, light can find its way through.
