Lilith & Eve

By: Kelly Kearney

When the first woman on earth runs into the first woman who came before her, Adam has some explaining to do, and no snake or evil fruit can save him from this self-made thrupple comedy. Landing in the shorts category at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, director and creator Sam de Ceccatty offers up a satirical retelling of the famous biblical story of Adam and Eve. With voiceovers from actresses Aimee Lou Wood and the charmingly funny Susan Wokoma, de Ceccatty manages to flip the script on this familiar story and create a new world beyond Genesis’s pages. Lilith & Eve paints a feminist view of the patriarchal tale of The Garden of Eden. 

In a vividly lush and colorful world full of animal fornication, species propagation and peace on earth, we begin in The Garden of Eden where everyone is safe because only two people are inhabiting it…or are there? When Eve (Aimee Lou Wood), dressed in her fig leaf apparel, runs directly into the unabashedly naked Lilith (Susan Wokoma) everything she thought she knew about the world she lives in comes into question. Eve always thought she was the first and only woman on earth – the prototype for all women to come after her. So, who is this outspoken purple-hued woman and why does she seem to resemble Adam (Conor Kennedy) and not Eve? Lilith wastes no time in kicking Eve in her ego by announcing her title “The First Woman Created” and Adam’s wife for one thousand years! Cue the clueless and incapable Adam and his blubbering excuses of demonic women who refused to be his maid. In a matter of seconds, Eve finds out that she was demoted to number two and her lazy husband is a liar.

After that shocking reveal Lilith, with a hand full of fruit she plucked from The Tree of Knowledge, skips off beyond the Garden’s perimeter and into a world Adam told Eve was full of demons, which he so graciously applied to Lilith as the main reason for not telling his second wife about the existence of his first. Adam is more like a baby than a grown man; always blaming others for his inadequacies and lying to get out of trouble. God’s first human is immature and lacking in any life skills whatsoever but that’s what he has Eve for, right? With her mind sufficiency blown from meeting his first wife, Eve breaks away from Adam and takes off after Lilith for more answers to her questions about this marriage and her life post-separation. What she learns from Lilith about her husband and her purpose in life leaves her questioning everything she ever knew and indeed her trust in Adam, too. 

The film, which is dedicated to de Ceccatty’s daughter whom he shares with the film’s producer and partner Manon Ardisson, takes its cues from animated series but adds a feminst layer to it we often don’t see in any biblical references or popular cartoons. Don’t get me wrong, they are there snuck in between the day the earth was created and Adam’s ribs but so often forgotten and rarely mentioned outside of Judaism. Lilith was always a warning to a patriarchal society that women who find their autonomy should be cast out and treated like a curse before they ask their husbands to cook their own dinners. It makes sense if you realize the social and political mood of the time and who was wielding the pen behind the parables. Lilith, with all of her outspoken female power and fruitful knowledge, veers left from the norm. She is the human embodiment of independence who has found her purpose beyond becoming a wife and mother. Unlike Eve she was Adam’s equal, even down to their purplish skin tone. His second wife wasn’t so lucky. Eve is more like a canary trapped in Adam’s gilded cage and she needed to find her female empowerment making Lilith the right person to open that door and let that little bird fly free.

What Lilith & Eve does right is craft a new look on a story that many, at least in the Christian world, tend to skip on past. de Ceccatty, who was raised in the Jewish faith, along with his partner Ardisson, raised Christian, manages to fuse today’s ethics to a story that’s long been embraced by the Abrahamic religions and he does so in a fun and empowering way. Unless you’re offended by animated genitals and squirrel sex, this film enlightens without ridiculing, it modernizes without losing the familiarty of the original story and it makes a seemingly out-of- touch past more palatable for today’s viewers. It’s no surprise de Ceccatty dedicated the short to his daughter because who wouldn’t want to inject a bit of feminism into faith? Women take up over half of the human population and could use a liberating role model like Lilith, not to mention hope for more self-realizing moments like the ones Lilith gifts to Eve. 

Besides the social message of the film the animation isn’t entirely unique; it’s in the same realm of other adult animated series that came before it like “Futurama.” Its style is recognizable but its vibrancy is new; it soaks through every magical inch of Eden giving the viewer a new look into the famous garden of which many have dreamed. It feels fresh and full of an abundance of magical colors and creatures, even including heavenly unicorns taken directly from the pages of Genesis, but it’s the character of Lilith who steals the best moments in film and drives the story forward and beyond the final credits. After a few minutes of living in deCeccatty’s world I couldn’t wait to see more from the dragon’s milk sipping– archangel riding, feminist icon. She draws you in and it’s largely due to the actor voicing her to life. Susan Wokoma breathes a level of strength into the character that is as inspiring as it is attractive, which says a lot about her talent considering Lilith is a cartoon. She’s an alluring mystery that would make any of the Eves of this world follow her lead.  

Not often, if ever, do we find the world of animation flipping through the pages of The Bible looking for stories that make us laugh as much as make us question what we know, but Sam de Ceccatty’s Lilith & Eve delivers on both fronts. Moving away from the male dominated world of storytelling in the animated genres, de Ceccatty offers something to the female cartoon fans and it’s long overdue. If you’ve always been fascinated by the story of Lilith and all of her manifestations in iconic feminist literature and film or you just love a good girl power comedy then do not skip this animated short. Like me, you will be praying for more adventures from the first and first-first wives of Adam and their lands of discovery beyond Eden. No snarky snake should keep you from this fruitful little short, even if Adam demands it, because in Lilith & Eve’s world it’s sisters doing it for themselves and the opinions from the Adams will be met with a flying apple to the head.