La gatita bruja
2016 · 9m · Nueva Zelanda
Directed by James Cunningham
Genres: animation, family, fantasy
Tones: mythic, tender, whimsical
A precocious kitten dreams of becoming a witch's familiar spirit and must pass a test, or remain a simple cat forever, but the witch sees something in her that she does not expect.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A kitten-wants-to-be-a-witch's-familiar pitch sounds like the kind of wholesome twee that makes me want to flee, except the film quietly flips the script—the witch doesn't want what the kitten thinks she wants, and suddenly we're in stranger, more interesting emotional territory than the premise had any right to suggest.
Cunningham's animation sits comfortably in the lineage of stop-motion fabulism and Eastern European fairy tale sensibility, with a formal restraint in pacing and palette that lets the mythic structure breathe rather than overwhelm; the film knows what tradition it's inheriting and honors it.
The entire film hinges on a single beat—the moment the witch's expectations crack and she sees the kitten differently than anticipated—and Cunningham commits fully to playing that reversal through subtle shifts in camera focus and silence rather than exposition, which is exactly the kind of micro-decision that separates a competent fantasy from something that actually lands.