The value of money is something most of us learned early in life. Back in school, a few coins from our parents came with a simple instruction: use them carefully! Money was tangible. You could hold it, count it, and feel its worth.
Today, that sense of value is fading. With digitisation, money has become almost invisible, just numbers on a screen, spent with a tap. But the meaning behind it hasn’t changed. Effort still defines value, even if we no longer see it.
This very idea led filmmaker Serhan Yorganci to create Square Heads, an animated feature built entirely from scratch by a single creator who taught himself 3D from zero. The process, Yorganci defines, is “something that never really ends,” and doing it on your own, “it’s not always clear if you’re on the right track. That uncertainty can actually be more tiring than the technical side,” he said in an interview with AnimationXpress.
But what began as practice, trial and error, and relentless experimentation slowly evolved into a full-fledged film. At its core, Square Heads is a comedy about hidden money and the work that goes into it. It explores how children today perceive money as something abstract and effortless, in contrast to older generations who experienced it as something physical and earned.
The story follows three children, Brave, Four Eyes, and Freckle, who treat money casually, wasting it with a few careless clicks. But things spiral when Brave’s strict father panics over their spending. In search of an easy fix, Brave brings home a mysterious watch said to grant wishes. Instead of magic, it transports them into a strange world governed by Ruhi, a harsh and controlling boss who forces them to earn every single coin.
Yorganci admires Brave. “The character I relate to the most is Brave. In relationships and in his first reactions, he usually comes from a more positive place. He doesn’t expect things to go wrong from the start. But when things don’t go as he expects, he doesn’t step back. He gets more persistent, tries to fix things, and doesn’t avoid his own mistakes. That balance feels familiar to me,” he shared.
That very mindset shapes the journey that follows. In this bizarre system where shortcuts don’t exist, the characters must think fast, outsmart the rules, and find their way back home. Along the way, they learn a simple but powerful truth: being clever, persistent, and resourceful matters far more than having money.
The film is written, directed, and produced by one person, and carries a grounded and personal tone. It blends humour with familiar observations about modern life, while staying rooted in emotion, character, and small human moments.
For Yorganci, the journey itself was as important as the final product. Independent filmmaking, he believes, is slow and uncertain, but steady effort allows ideas to grow beyond their original form.
The film was produced under Digitoons, a Turkey-based animation studio founded by the filmmaker himself. “Working independently helped me build my own process and make decisions directly, and I’d like to keep that. But I don’t feel like I need to do everything on my own again. Having support in the right areas could make the process more balanced. I still want to stay independent, just with a clearer way of sharing the work,” said the filmmaker when asked working solo on future projects.
The film, which started during the pandemic and took around three years to complete, has already gained international attention, with selections at Italy’s Cartoons on the Bay Panorama and Ischia Global Film and Music Festival. It is now streaming across platforms in the US, Canada, and parts of Europe, Africa, and Australia, including Apple TV and Plex, with additional availability on The Roku Channel, YouTube Movies & TV, and Xumo. While expanding its reach step by step, the film has been distributed to public libraries across the US and Canada through Midwest Tape.
Now that Square Heads is out in the world, it no longer belongs only to its creator. It belongs to its audience. And perhaps that’s the point, because in a world where value is increasingly invisible, stories like this remind us that what truly matters is still earned, not tapped.
