Unicorn Wars

Ever since the unicorns have taken control of the Magic Forest, young teddy bears have been training to recapture it in the “Love Camp” army centre. After all, the prophesied second coming is at stake. It is therefore not surprising that Galician illustrator Alberto Vázquez (“Psiconautas”) describes his “psychedelic anti-war allegory” as a mash-up of the Bible, “Bambi” and “Apocalypse Now”. Like in that war epic, we also accompany a troop that becomes more and more entangled in enemy territory as they search for their lost comrades. The filmmakers practically revel in distancing themselves from any family friendliness with gleefully celebrated depictions of violence and elements from “Full Metal Jacket” or “Mononoke Hime”. But basically, the film is about the ambivalent relationship between two contrasting teddy bear brothers. While the overweight Gordi repeatedly stands up for the hot-headed Azulín, the latter never misses an opportunity to put his pink brother in a bad light.

Vázquez had already sketched this conflict between two teddy bears on a unicorn hunt in the short film “Sangre de Unicornio” in 2013, at that time still in free-form pencil drawings with dabs of red watercolour. For the action-packed feature film, the author has mythologically revamped his original material and expanded the visual stylistic devices. By using Blender open-source software, the team was also able to animate the three-dimensionally modelled unicorns and the hand-drawn teddy bears in the same programme. Overall, the figures now look more streamlined, but “Unicorn Wars” captivates with its stunning colour dramaturgy in which, for example, silhouetted black unicorns look majestic and aloof. (Oswald Iten)