TATUAPÉ MAHAL TOWER | 2014

Synopsis

Tatuape Mahal Tower is an animation/experimental short film about the life story of Javier Juarez Garcia, an Argentinian scale model figure who decided to live in Sao Paulo to work in the city’s many real state scale models.

Edifício Tatuapé Mahal is a gem. Almost ten years since it was released, the themes of the short film are still fresh, and the execution is remarkable.

The premise comes from a clever idea of translating an idealized image of society through model dolls. The framing alternates, as if we were seeing the scenes in a model, from above, or from the point of view of the figures.

The Almodovarian story of a doll looking for a shady market in sex reassignment surgeries for miniature models brings absurd ironies, like his friend who wanted to become a female model doll but ended up becoming a Russian doll.

With flawed characters driven by human desires, the animation manages to empathize with the viewer by narrating the protagonist’s unusual and contemporary situation.

A predecessor to The Orphan (2018), the short is directed by Fernanda Salloum and Carolina Markowics (Charcoal, 2022), who worked in partnership with animator Fabio Yamagi to give movement and life to the miniatures through stop motion, a manual and meticulous style that found a perfect script for its use.

Why we recommend it

Using stop-motion animation with scale model figures, the short film presents an idealized and fascinating conception of society. The Almodovarian trajectory of the protagonist Javier balances the tragic and the hilarious.