El gran atleta
2024 · 5m · Argentina
Directed by Emilio Zapata, Nicole Zelaya, Melina Andrada
Genres: animation, family, sports
A small hamster fascinated by the athletes he sees on television escapes his cage and sets out to reach a marathon starting outside his house so he can race.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A hamster watching TV and chasing Olympic dreams—yeah, it's cute on paper, but the execution doesn't subvert the premise hard enough to justify the concept; it's whimsy without teeth, and I expected these three directors to interrogate the absurdity rather than just lean into it.
The film sits comfortably in a lineage of anthropomorphic sports comedies, and the three-director collaboration suggests a considered hand, though five minutes feels slight for exploring the formal possibilities of such a high-concept premise.
There's something in how they've clearly chosen to keep the scale intimate—a hamster's body against the geography of his house becomes its own marathon—and whatever decision locked that visual metaphor is what elevates this from greeting-card concept to something worth watching.