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This piece explores Dheemant Joshi’s animated short Eruption, a witty and relatable film that likens the experience of getting a pimple to a full-scale volcanic disaster. Blending personal reflection with cultural commentary, it highlights the embarrassment, humour, and emotional chaos of adolescence — while emphasising why seemingly lighthearted films about acne and girlhood matter.
To pop or not to pop — that is always the question.
I’ll be staring at myself in the mirror with a gigantic pimple that, without fail, shows up exactly when I’ve planned the weekend of my life. Of course, if you pop it, you’re left with an unmissable scar; if you leave it alone, it inflates like a balloon waiting to explode. There are times I just stand there, locked in a staring contest with my own forehead, convinced I can will it away. They are masters of sneak attacks, always arriving suddenly, creeping up like a bad dream, and once it’s there, you start believing you’re in one. The aftermath is bloody, dramatic, and makes you feel like you’re fighting a war you’re destined to lose.
The entire experience is jarring — even disgusting — and yet, I genuinely believe it’s necessary. It builds character. No one who grew up with flawlessly clear skin was ever an interesting person. (I'm only kidding, maybe). And it’s also hilarious: the debates, the tears, the creative expletives. All of it is perfectly encapsulated in Dheemant Joshi’s animated short film Eruption.
Screened at the 2025 Kyiv International Film Festival, the film maps the timeline of getting, noticing, panicking over, and eventually making peace with a pimple — framing it like a natural disaster, a full-blown volcanic eruption. Animated over interviews with young women reminiscing about their own battles with these tiny tyrants, a design student Joshi recalls, “The recordings were so unfiltered, honest, and unintentionally funny that I knew they had to become the base of the film.”
The short opens in a desolate wasteland — because nothing says “I have a pimple” like feeling personally abandoned by the universe. A lonely volcano, quietly oozing lava, becomes the perfect stand-in for that under-the-skin bump. When “cosmic interference” finally triggers the eruption, it feels determined to ruin your day, and possibly the rest of your week.
“If you get it here, it's a sign that your stomach is bad, or that you have depression, or that you’re not sleeping well,” says one of the narrators. I remember being fourteen and feeling deeply embarrassed that this was happening to me — convinced I was the volcanic eruption. It took me, and most of the people I grew up with, a long time to finally laugh about it.
Young girls are so often left without the language or resources to understand what’s happening to their bodies, which is why films like this — seemingly silly, effortlessly light — matter more than they appear to. Yes, we do eventually joke about these things, but reinforcing that laughter, that shared reassurance, and that communal feeling of solidarity, is never a bad idea.
