Destino took a staggering 58 years to finally come to life – from its start in 1945 to completion in 2003 – making it one of the longest-gestating shorts in animation history for a film that’s just seven minutes long. It’s that rare short where two legends – Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí – collided in the mid-1940s and created something truly bizarre and beautiful.
It began when they met and decided to make a piece based on the Mexican ballad “Destino.” Dalí brought his melting clocks, endless deserts, and impossible shapes; Disney animator John Hench tried to wrangle it all into animation. They worked intensely for months in 1945-46, producing sketches, paintings, and even about 17 seconds of test footage, but money troubles after the war killed the project. It sat forgotten in the vaults for decades.
Then, in the late ’90s, Roy E. Disney rediscovered the old materials. A small team of about 25 animators revived it, using the original storyboards and Dalí’s notes to finish what had waited nearly six decades. Released in 2003, the wordless film follows a woman named Dahlia and Chronos (time itself) in a hypnotic chase through shifting landscapes – crumbling towers, giant bells, eye-covered creatures, and those iconic dripping forms.
Set to a haunting song by Dora Luz, it’s pure visual poetry about love, desire, and time slipping away. For short filmmakers, Destino proves you can fuse wildly different styles – Disney’s elegance with full-on surrealism – and still land something emotional and coherent. It even earned an Oscar nod. Destino was a long time coming, but we at ShortFilmWeb say it was well worth the wait.
