HOOPS, HOPES & DREAMS
Documentary Film

Tomato Beach created three animated sequences featuring dynamic basketball action for the documentary Hoops, Hopes & Dreams, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win Best Documentary Short at the 2025 Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF).

At the heart of the film is a lesser-known story about how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Andrew Young used basketball as a powerful tool to build trust and connect with communities during the Civil Rights Movement. The quiet ingenuity of this strategy, along with its continued relevance today, made it a compelling story to explore through animation.

The project came to Tomato Beach through director Glenn Kaino, a visionary conceptual artist and filmmaker whose work often explores social and environmental themes in thoughtful and innovative ways. Tomato Beach founder and director Kirill Yeretsky has collaborated with Kaino on several previous projects aimed at sparking dialogue and raising awareness, including an immersive art installation focused on ecological stewardship and two feature documentaries, With Drawn Arms and Derek DelGaudio’s In & Of Itself.

For Hoops, Hopes & Dreams, Tomato Beach drew inspiration from Indian ink paintings, developing a loose, sketch-driven visual language with subtly stylized character proportions and facial features. Because the film reflects on historical moments, the expressive, high-contrast approach allows certain details to remain impressionistic, inviting viewers to engage emotionally rather than literally.

The studio’s art direction was designed to feel both contemporary and timeless, carrying a sense of dignity and gravitas appropriate for portraying figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Obama. To reflect the emotional and historical progression of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King’s sequence is steeped in darkness, evoking the injustice of his era, while the President Obama sequence is brighter and more hopeful. Dr. King’s signature yellow hue is woven into the environment of the later sequence, symbolizing his enduring influence and legacy.