Decorado, the latest short film from Goya Award-winning director Alberto Vazquez (Birdboy, Unicorn Blood), will screen as part of the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors Fortnight program on May 20 at the Croisette theater. A co-production of UniKo in Bilbao, Spain and French studio Autour de Minuit (which also handles international distribution), the moody black-and-white animation is built on the premise: the world is a marvelous theatre, but the casting is deplorable.
This year’s Directors Fortnight animated offerings also include the shorts Happy End by Jan Saska (Czech Rep.), a hand-drawn graduation film that is “a dark comedy about death with a happy ending” that unfolds through a chain of chance encounters; and Listening to Beethoven by Stayer studio founder Garri Bardin (Russia), which uses an allegory of the natural versus the industrial to celebrate the undeniable triumph of freedom over suppression.
In addition to Decorado‘s bow at Cannes, Alberto Vazquez will have his first ever animated feature project Psychonauts (Psiconautas) running in the official selection for Annecy this summer, continuing the strange adventures of Birdboy. The feature is based on Vazquez’s original graphic novel and produced by Zircozine and Basque Films, with Autour de Minuit handling distribution.
