WATCH: Scottish Opera creatives discuss award-winning animation Josefine

The film has already won a host of international awards, including best short film at 2024's Messina Opera Film Festival, and on Tuesday it was screened for Scotsman readers at the Scotsman Picturehouse in Edinburgh.

Scotsman classical music critic Ken Walton introduced the film, and then hosted a Q&A with filmmaker Antonia Bain, composer Samuel Bordoli and chorus master Susannah Wapshott.

“The story of Josefine is pretty much an essay to begin with,” said Bain. “But once you break it down it’s really fascinating.... I think the big question that came out of it was what Kafka himself thought about his own work, and his own place in the world and whether he actually mattered as an artist.

“Once Sam and I discussed that and took that apart, it really became a great space to do lots of different things with.”

“The structure and the emotional and visual aspects are there,” said Bordoli, “but it was my job to tell that story through music, whether that’s enhancing it or undermining it, whatever needs to be done.

“The most thrilling part is when you’re actually there in the session hearing the orchestra [play the score], and the orchestra of Scottish Opera are just brilliant. Nothing compares to the moment when it all just happens.”

The part of Josefine in the film is sung by Scottish Opera 2022/23 Emerging Artist Zoe Drummond.

“Zoe was amazingly versatile to work with”, said Wapshott. “We both started with very little score - it was a very topsy-turvy way of putting something together. We essentially had the words first, then the vocal line, and not much accompaniment, so [...] just through working with the notes and the phrases and the patterns, we began to build a picture.”

READ MORE: The making of Scottish Opera's award-winning animation