A silent descent into grief: a man, a mist-drowned forest, and the shadow waiting at the end of every path.
La Sombra Quimérica is a multi-award-winning short film directed by Nacho Herranz and written by Gonzalo Díaz. It is already a few years old and available to stream online, but when a request for a review on an animated short film finds its way to my inbox, it’s hard to say, “No.”
Set to Mozart’s Lacrimosa, the film was made entirely in Blender and has a very short runtime of only 3:18. No dialogue means that the film had to portray all of its meaning through music, emotion and imagery – and at this, La Sombra Quimérica is obviously a critical success.
The story follows our unnamed protagonist who, after a night of drinking and depression, finds himself at a great mansion in a haunted forest. It is here that he confronts the ghost of his grief and makes some life-altering choices.
While the Blender animations are indeed simple and somewhat comical, the animation still hits hard. Right in the feels, if you would. There is a stark white, black, and red colour tone that makes the short feel both very clean and also poignant, the red really adding a sense of danger and damage.
The use of Lacrimosa is clever, as our familiarity with the song triggers media often associated with it. Strong emotions, life-changing moments, the end of something important – we have been trained for years by media to have these emotive responses to this piece of music, and Herranz uses that to his advantage with this short.
It’s a smart, well-contained and perfectly paced story that anyone can follow and understand, all neatly compact in under 4 minutes. But you don’t have to take my word for it; I have included a link to the short below. Enjoy! And stay sordid.
Director’s Statement:
La Sombra Quimérica began as a script by my friend Gonzalo Díaz — written, at first, with dialogue. I felt that if the music carried the story and the light and framing did their work, we could do without words entirely. The stark three-colour look grew out of my own limits: I am not a trained animator or designer, so I stripped the film down to its essence – three colours and nothing on screen that wasn’t load-bearing. What began as a constraint became the film’s voice.
