Mehua
2017 · 5m · France
Directed by Camille Aigloz, Lucy Vallin, Michiru Baudet, Simon Anding Malandin, Diane Tran Duc, Margo Roquelaure
Genres: animation, fantasy, historical
Tones: mythic, provocative, theatrical
Two young Aztec girls are about to receive the greatest of honours: being sacrificed to the gods.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Six directors collaborating on a 5-minute mythic animation sounds like it should be a disaster, but instead they've made something genuinely strange—a historical-fantasy hybrid that refuses to settle into any comfortable genre lane, which means most programmers will sleep on it and they'll be wrong.
Mehua sits at a fascinating intersection of animation traditions and historical consciousness; the theatrical tone and mythic register suggest a work aware of its own place in lineage, and the six-director structure reads as a deliberate formal choice rather than a compromise.
The real move here is how they've used the animation medium itself as the decision—not as escape into fantasy, but as the precise tool to render historical and mythic material with a texture and intensity live-action couldn't touch, and that specificity is what transforms a concept into a singular object.
Reviews
Gobelins in Paris always fascinates and amazes us with the wonderful films they create. Brilliant design and traditional animation supported with a little CGI.