Japan Premiere

Eric is an animator who lives in Metro Manila. He is close to his mother Rosalinda and has a crush on his coworker Carlo. Most excitingly, it seems the feeling is mutual. What makes him different is that he has no mouth and gets by with a whiteboard and text. Despite this, he and Carlo look to be on lock for a date. This is when Rosalinda calls Eric and asks him to check on his uncle who seems to have gone missing. Eric and Carlo go and check only to find the uncle dead. When Carlo goes for help, Eric is abducted by an alien who first visited him as a child…
This is a dark story of working through trauma. It has the power to move as the tragic truth behind Eric’s history of alien abduction and his missing mouth is explored effectively through rotoscope and 2D animation. Timeline jumps and sci-fi/body horror are evoked in misleadingly simplistic but menacing animated sequences while the rotoscoping accentuates the real actor’s performance to break through any prejudice against animation as a medium and heighten the dramatic acting. [Jason MAHER]