Sintel
2010 computer-generated short film
Sintel (code-named Project Durian during production) is a 2010 animated fantasy short film and the third Blender "open movie". It was produced by Ton Roosendaal, chairman of the Blender Foundation, written by Esther Wouda, directed by Colin Levy, at the time an artist at Pixar and art direction by David Revoy, who is known for Pepper&Carrot, a free and open source webcomic series. It was made at the Blender Institute, part of the Blender Foundation. The plot follows the character, Sintel, who is tracking down her pet Scales, a dragon. Just like the other Blender "open movies," the film was made using Blender, a free and open source software application for animation, created and supported by the Blender Foundation.
The name comes from the Dutch word sintel, which can mean 'cinder', or 'ember'.
Overview
Work began in May 2009. The film was officially released on 27 September 2010 at the Netherlands Film Festival. The online release was made available for download on 30 September 2010. The film was viewed over 1,000,000 times in a matter of weeks.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sintel” is 2010 computer-generated short film. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Sintel, computer-generated and short, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “2010 computer-generated short film” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q925587. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sintel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.