Papaya Review: Charming & Original Animated Tale

Papaya utilises simple geometric shapes and vibrant colours to create a dialogue-free tale that will make you tear up over the fate of a papaya seed.

After falling from her mother tree, a papaya seed rejects her natural instinct to grow and instead longs to fly. As the mischievous seed attempts the impossible, she is separated from her calm forest home and transported through the scary industrial world, where she faces modern dangers such as hungry birds, hot asphalt, and airborne pesticides. Realising she must put her roots down somewhere, this little seed embarks on a perilous journey back home to the rainforest.

The clearest influence on Papaya would be Flow; both films manage to elicit a great deal of emotion from the audience without the need for dialogue. Instead, they make the main character such a cute object and put them through so much peril that your heart is in your mouth throughout the short runtime. An animated film does not need dialogue to move scenes forward when it can rely on creativity and imagination, which this movie has in abundance.

The art style in this is phenomenal. By keeping everything in simple geometric shapes, it creates a sense of relatability in the animation, letting the audience feel like they’re watching something simple, until you reach the psychedelic scenes, which turn that concept on its head. The colour palette is bold and vibrant, making the Amazon rainforest literally jump out of the screen, contrasting well with the darkness of the black papaya seed. Each of the little bugs the seed meets is animated beautifully, using the geometric art style to create such original versions of these insects.

The story is incredibly moving, something you would not expect when coming into this. It has a lot to say about environmentalism, which hits home even more when made by Brazilians who worry about the deforestation of their iconic rainforest. The narrative also shines a light on the depressing nature of agriculture by showing these other seeds as unhappy and trapped, while the natural papaya seeds are joyous and free. It deals with these issues brilliantly, and when our little seed is struggling to get back to his home, it actually makes you so sad for her. This art form is truly outstanding when you have the audience crying for a seed.

The film does maybe go a little too far with its ending, but this is one of the most moving pieces of animation in a long time. With an original premise and art style, this should be seen by people of all ages and should get the level of acclaim that Flow managed to achieve a couple of years back.

Papaya premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on February 15-22, 2026. Read our Berlin Film Festival reviews and our list of 20 films to watch at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival!