‘Ice Age’ Helmer Carlos Saldanha Boards ‘La Perra’ Short as Exec Producer

Carlos Saldanha — the Brazilian director, writer and animator known for bringing Blue Sky’s blockbuster Ice Age films to the big screen as well as Rio, Rio 2, Robots, Oscar nominee Ferdinand and this year’s hybrid pic Harold and the Purple Crayon — has signed on as an executive producer to the Oscar-qualified Colombian animated short La Perra (The Bitch), directed by Carla Melo Gampert.

A hand-illustrated exploration of womanhood, the short screened in competition at Cannes, Annecy, TIFF, SXSW, AFI Fest and more, winning Academy Awards-qualifying honors at San Francisco international Film Festival, Chilemonos and Bogoshorts, as well as the Macondo Award for best animated short from the Colombian film academy.

La Perra takes inspiration from the director’s own life experiences coming of age in a culture which expects women to transition from the innocence of childhood to the approved life of a mother, and labels those who seek out their own paths as “perras.” As the director told Animation Magazine soon after the short’s premiere:

“La Perra is a story about a mother who brings a female dog into the house to take care of her young daughter while she goes out to meet men. When the mother returns the daughter is already a teenager and now she wants to discover the outside world. When the daughter returns, the mother is getting old and the dog is about to die.

“When I was 11 years old, my parents separated and I went to live with my mother in a new house. They told me it was temporary and to fill the void and their instability, my mother gave me a puppy — Conga. She grew up with me, she was an accomplice of the transition from my childhood to adolescence, of the transformations of my body, of my first boyfriends, of my insecurities, of guilt. Conga died when I was 25 years old, at that time I stayed a lot at my boyfriend’s house and I felt that I had missed the last months of her life, it still gives me a little guilt.

“Conga’s death also made me think about my mother’s approaching old age and my grandmother, about time passing and my ties with the women in the family. Conga marked a stage, she was very important to everyone in the family and it was she who brought us a lot of love in the midst of sad times.

“The death of my dog was recent when I started writing this short film, I guess something in me needed to bring out everything that Conga symbolized and I ended up approaching motherhood, guilt, and how female sexuality is looked at. Everything was very spontaneous at the moment of writing La Perra because her absence made me reflect a lot on the passage of time and what it means to be a mother and a bitch: the animal and the woman.”

La Perra is produced by Franco Lolli and Capucine Mahé at Evidencia Films (Colombia) and Naomi Denamur and Julie Billy at June Films (France). In addition to Saldanha, the executive producers roster welcomes Claudia Chakmati and Gabriela Matarazzo, founders of Rhiza Films in Brazil.

“There’s something invigorating about witnessing a new wave of talent emerging with such force and vitality. Our continent is brimming with untold, singular stories, and La Perra embodies this in every frame,” Saldanha told Variety. “Carla Melo has crafted a visually striking narrative infused with an erotic sensibility that is as visceral as it is delicate. It’s both raw and refined, a perfect balance of harshness and sensitivity. It’s been a long time since a short film has moved me so deeply, and La Perra does so in ways I won’t soon forget.”

Melo reflected in her interview with Animation Magazine, “I think there is something very powerful happening today with animation, lately it is taking the importance it deserves and opening an important space in cinemas and as a way of expression. I feel that the world is becoming more and more interested in seeing that animation is not only for children or commercial … Latin American animation is also becoming more visible, it is a tool to think about the body, the image, cinema, whatever comes to mind. There are more and more short films that explore intimacy and femininity. With my colleagues in Colombia we are curating Latin American animation where we find impressive works, which reveal not only the inside of people but also touch on political and historical issues from deep places to reveal new layers without falling into stereotypes. That is why we celebrate that Latin American animation, sincere and human, is increasingly seen in big festivals.”

Read more about La Perra in Animation Magazine‘s Annecy Festival 2023 short film highlights here.

[Source: Variety]