DIRECTOR: Amy Nicholson
PRODUCER: Amy Nicholson
EDITOR: John Young
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Amy Nicholson, Jerry Risius
ANIMATION: Greg McLeod

Amy Nicholson’s award-winning short Pickle has no business being as funny as it is. It is an energetic and amusing overview of what sounds like an entirely traumatizing experience, as it chronicles 25 years of Tom and Debbie Nicholson’s unbelievably bad luck with a bevy of rescue animals, from the eponymous Pickle the fish to an entire flock of ill-fated fowl. At its heart, Pickle explores the human capacity to care for all creatures throughout their sometimes greatly protracted lives until their occasionally sudden and unfortunate deaths.

Nicholson’s films include the short Beauty School, the feature Muskrat Lovely and the Oscar-qualifying Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride. Nicholson says she always tries to walk the line in her work between “something that is serious and something you can laugh at, but you’re laughing with, not at.” That’s exactly what she accomplishes with Pickle.