The Galician Alberto Vázquez is confirmed as a world reference in independent animation cinema

• Criticism "merciless" ways of seeing childhood

The macabre, says the RAE, participates in "the ugliness of death."

However,

-as before him Edward Gorey, the Grimm brothers or, why not, Tim Burton- has long been convinced that the repulsive also creates a hobby and that from the strange union of the tender and the gloomy arises essentially beauty;

a melancholy beauty, cloudy and very sad, but beauty nonetheless.

is the latest and most careful example of this belief.

“Why not a tale of ruthless and cruel little bears, and diabolical unicorns?” says the Galician animator by way of introduction.

What follows is one of the indisputable attractions of the most important animation festival in the world.

Next to the Pixar factory with

as its emblem, a Spanish film.

, and one of them is the second feature film of the winner of almost everything (including Goya) for

(2015).

«The complicated thing is to consider an animated project like this one that lasts six years and that is not what is expected of an animated film.

First of all, it's for adults, not children », he explains.

Still from the movie 'Unicorn Wars'. WORLD

To situate ourselves,

tells the story of Azulito and Gordi, two bear brothers who, like all of their kind, crave unicorn blood to be beautiful and happy.

To get what they want, they will be capable of what only a disgruntled bear would be capable of: kill, amputate, bleed, dismember... «The idea is to generate a starting point that puts the viewer on alert.

It is not about provoking to provoke, but about provoking emotions, feelings... to reflect, "says Vázquez, who confesses to being an iconoclast and, given the case, voracious.

Correspondingly, the film navigates through cinematographic genres ("Animation is a medium, not a genre," he points out) with the healthy and edifying intention of stripping them bare, inverting them and even refuting them.

is a war film with the same forcefulness as a fratricidal tragedy;

fable with the same clarity as myth, comedy by dint of dark tale.

«There is an idea of ​​​​animation that also seems appropriate to refute.

Why not do the same thing in two dimensions as movies like

or

?” Vázquez insists.

The film that arises from each of the challenges - let's call it that - that the director poses represents a giant advance with his previous work.

In

it was a twisted story about minimalist and also cruel stories.

Now, everything is ambition in a palette of a thousand characters on many other landscapes that unfold in

Wildly macabre and, above all, beautiful.

The film opens in October and everything indicates that it will be an event in what is called Spanish animation.

The director Alberto Vázquez.WORLD

“I didn't expect that I would present the film in the middle of a war in Europe.

But that only gives an idea of ​​the validity of certain themes always.

The bears are a militarized, religious society that controls public opinion and that wants to conquer a magical forest full of resources that they believe belong to them... Let's say that the same thing happens on the news," Vázquez reflects.

Next Thursday will be the world premiere of the film.

And then, yes and against the RAE, the macabre will be beautiful.

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