Disney artistic director Malcon Pierce faced a devastating loss. In 2016 while he was working on Moana, he and his wife were expecting a baby boy, Cooper. But complications during the pregnancy resulted in Cooper’s death. “And this reset my wife and I in a very big way,” Pierce told Deadline. “I was just thinking about grief as this incredibly big and nearly impossible thing to get over.” It was a loss that crushed Pierce as he found himself trying to avoid facing his grief. “ It was this idea that if I shut out this loss, I’d get better, and when I’m better, I’ll be able to talk about it,” he said.

With the help of his wife, Pierce was able to face the grief and he began to look at it with his artistic eye. He then received inspiration from and infant loss group he and his wife attended. “There were a lot of people talking about how they were triggered by watching movies featuring pregnant characters. And there was a lot of conversation about grief within couples who deal with the situation differently — either one of you wants to talk about the issue, or you don’t.” Through his group, Pierce realized that infant loss was a reality for many couples and wanted to give something to people going through that loss.

What resulted was Pierce’s Oscar-qualifying short, “Versa.” It’s a six-minute short without dialogue, reflecting the difficulty of wording the pain of the loss. Yet the images are powerful as a celestial couple tries to pull themselves from despair after pregnancy loss. And while he hoped it could be a help to other parents experiencing a similar loss, Pierce found healing for himself. “Right after we lost our son, I was coming to work, I didn’t want to talk about it and was hiding all these scars,” he said. “Then, after working through understanding and the power of acceptance, I started to look at it like, I still have a relationship with Cooper. It’s different than what I expected, but I think about him all the time, and he’s with me all the time.” His view on grief also changed. “I had this idea that you could have a great loss and go through the steps of grief, and then you could start the next chapter. But that’s not true,” he said. “What we learned is that grief is something that you learn to have a relationship with and you carry it with you. Over time, it becomes easier to carry, but it can also be very heavy, so I wanted to show this idea of wearing your scars proudly.”