While it commonly takes significant time to complete a motion picture, the process does not typically involve 15 years. That’s how long it took writer-director Chris Sullivan to complete his animated featured “Consuming Spirits.” Why so long? In addition to raising a family and working as a film professor, Sullivan is an “obsessive artist who animated three-fifths of its 129 minutes with his own hands, using puppets, tracing paper and miniature models shot on 16mm film,” explains the Wall Street Journal.

Sullivan produced the often dark and intensely personal project for about $80,000 with help from family members, friends and two assistant animators. He also edited the film, played most of the instruments on its soundtrack and voiced one of the main characters.

“If I didn’t have a job or kids to raise, it would have taken six or seven years, but I didn’t Madame Curie myself away,” says the 52-year old Chicago filmmaker. “I worked very hard, but I probably worked on this film less than most Americans watch TV.”

The film has been screened at major festivals and was most recently shown at New York’s Film Forum. Its complicated plot explores a variety of themes including “family dysfunction, misguided love and the pull of the tragic past on the present,” notes WSJ. And while it has yet to find a distributor, a rave review in The New York Times by A.O. Scott — who describes it as an “eccentric protest against digital tyranny” and “inquiry into the darkest zones of the human heart” — has reportedly helped draw interest from potential backers.

Sullivan is already working on his next feature called “The Orbit of Minor Satellites,” and hopes to complete the film in three years.