Portugal is this year’s Country of Honor at the Annecy Animation Festival, so we decided to take an in-depth look at the current generation of artists who are helping to usher in a new era for the country’s animation sector. and, increasingly, causing waves abroad.
Below is a list, in no particular order, of 11 exciting Portuguese animation talents to keep an eye on. Some have been around for several years and have already begun to form impressive bodies of work, while others are simply emerging onto the scene.
Rodrigo Goulão de Sousa
The work of Gobelins-trained filmmaker Rodrigo Goulão De Sousa incorporates a distinct 2D aesthetic and heavy genre horror and thriller themes that recurrently border on the disturbing. The combination makes its titles feel as fresh thematically as they do aesthetically, increasing the ways in which animation can be used to scare audiences. De Sousa’s appearance on our list is timely, as Grownup Swim is posting a trio of his horror shorts on their official YouTube channel as part of their Grownup Swim Smalls collection. Several of Sousa’s films can be found online. We propose “Tales of Salt Water”, the trailer for “Playground”, “Uncanny Alley 01 – The Screening” to get you started.
Monica Santos
Santos’ 2022 short film “The Pink Jacket” is part of this year’s Annecy Portuguese highlight, having previously been nominated for the Portuguese Cinema Academy’s Sophia Prize. Mixing playful music and stop-motion animation to tell a political story about a pair of Pink Jackets who always have something up their sleeve. In the basement of his otherwise bright and beautiful home, Pink Coat uses couture and tortures political dissidents. Best known for “Entre as Sombras” (see below), Santos is now working on two series, one live-action and the other a hybrid live-action/animation documentary about the history of mental health in Portugal. Santos regularly works with BAP Animation Studios colleague Alice Eça Guimarães, the next experience on our list.
Alice Eça Guimarães
Co-directing with Santos, Guimarães impressed with the short films “Amélia & Duarte”, a participant in the Annecy competition in 2015, and “Entre as Sombras”, which received a César nomination from the French Academy in 2019. The duo used pixelation, a stop mode -motion in which real actors are used as intimate puppets, with great impact in both films. Guimarães is currently developing an animated series titled “Para o Bem do Estado” and a new short titled “Because Today is Saturday”, a woman trying to find time for herself that will be completed later this year.
João González
João Gonzalez says that “he has an incredible interest in combining his musical training with his creative practice in animated cinema”. To this end, the multidisciplinary artist writes, directs, animates and composes the music for all his films. Two years ago, his short “Ice Stores” impressed at Cannes Critics Week, where it won best short. The following year, “Ice Stores” won an Oscar for an animated short, becoming the first Portuguese film in history to do so. Gonzalez is now working on his next project and will spend a year in Paris producing the project.
Maria Trigo Teixeira
The Portuguese Trigo now divides her time between Porto and Berlin, having studied animation at the prestigious Movie College Babelsberg Konrad Wolf in the latter. In 2019, his graduation film “Inside Me” was shown in competition in Annecy and later received the German Short Movie Award for animation. In 2021, she was chosen for the NEF Animation Residency in Fontevraud, where she began developing her new short film, “It Shouldn’t Rain Tomorrow”, a story about a single mother who returns to her childhood home looking for help only to look for help. her personal mother moving away from her. The film will premiere in Annecy this year on Tuesday, June 11th. Trigo is currently in development with his next film, “Canine’s Finest Buddy.”
Diogo Costa
Costa is a true newcomer here and is currently in post-production at COLA Animation on his debut short, “The Hunt,” an eight-minute CG-animated horror piece. The film is being produced using a pipeline Costa calls “Guerrilla Animation,” which he says allows us to “make an animated film that can rival major Hollywood productions, for a fraction of the price.” To produce the film, Costa recruited world-class independent experts from around the world, and the results are breathtaking. A short trailer is available here. “The Hunt” will be completed this year and will begin its contest in the fall.
Vier Nev
Nev, multidisciplinary artist, studied multimedia at ESMAD and VR at the London School of Communication UAL. A member of Portugal’s prolific artist cooperative Cola Animation, his VFX work can be seen in standout titles such as “L’Ombre des papillons,” a participant in Sofia El Khyari’s 2022 Annecy, and Oscar-nominated “Ice Retailers.” , by João Gonzalez. In his own work, Vier works with light and shadow to create images that play with ideas. Nev’s next film, “The Dance of the Fanchonos,” explores the views of three queer people during a time when even talking about queerness was forbidden. He will be one of five mission launchers in a session dedicated to Portuguese at this year’s MIFA.
Laura Gonçalves
Among the most talented filmmakers on our list, Gonçalves appears in this year’s Annecy short film competition with “Percebes,” his latest collaboration with frequent collaborator Alexandra Ramires (who appears on our list just below her photo). With the ocean and the concrete Algarve as a backdrop, the film follows the entire life cycle of a certain seafood called barnacles, also known as barnacles, a delicacy in Portugal and Galicia. Gonçalves’ The previous film, “The Rubbish Man”, in which Ramires served as animator, was shown in competition in Annecy and received best animation in Clermont-Ferrand and the grand prize and audience awards in Zagreb. Gonçalves is currently working on his own original animated series, “Anonymous Marias”.
Alexandra Ramires
Ramires’ 2020 solo short “Tie,” on which Gonçalves worked as an animator, screened in competition in Zagreb and at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Portuguese Cinema Academy’s Sophia Award for best animated short. While many of Ramires and Gonçalves’ works rely on images based on real devices and human characters, “Tie” is composed of pencil drawings on black paper, creating a surreal aesthetic that pairs well with the short’s more surreal images. Ramires is now developing his own series, “The Boy Eloy.” It’s worth noting that some of the names on this list are moving into serialized productions, a development price tag.
Miguel Lima
Lima teams up with Serbian-born but Porto-based artist Dimitri Mihajlovic on the haunting 2023 short “Nearly Forgotten,” a woman exploring the impermanence of childhood memories as she imagines herself wandering through her grandfather’s abandoned house. The film was a local success last year, being nominated for the Quirino Prize and winning the national competition at Cinanima and best animation at Caminhos do Cinema Português. The pair attended the Escola Superior de Artes de Lisboa, where Lima studied painting. Lima is now developing tasks at BAP – Animation Studio, one of the most vibrant artistic models in all of Portugal.
Francisco Magalhães
Magalhães is best known for his work as animation supervisor on “Scavengers Reign,” the adult-animated sci-fi series that was recently botched by Max and revived by Netflix, where it has amassed a large cult following. For much of the past year, he has teamed up again with the show’s producer, Green Road Photos, on Joe Bennet and Steve Hely’s new series, “Frequent Side Results,” which will be highlighted by Grownup Swim during a panel in Annecy on Wednesday. fair. . Magalhães played several roles during production, starting as a storyboard artist before moving to assistant director for one of the episodes. He also worked as an animator for several months. Magellan remains busy, but tells us that his current mission is being kept secret for now.