After winning the 2019 Best Animated Short Film Oscar for Bao, a very emotional film about a mother and her relationship to a bao (which is really her son), you’d think Pixar would lighten up for their next project.
Well sorry, their latest film will not only break your heart all over again but will also make you care passionately about animal rights and welfare.
Pixar’s latest animated short is called Kitbull and it tells the story about an unlikely friendship between an abused pitbull and a stray kitten, all of which is depicted in a unique 2D animation style that’s uncharacteristic of the studio’s usual 3D look.
If you haven’t heard of Kitbull before, that’s because it was produced under the studio’s new experimental SparkShorts program, which involves giving Pixar employees six months and a limited budget to create whatever film they want.
Directed by Rosana Sullivan, Kitbull originally started life as a simple “cat video” but it quickly blossomed into an exploration into animal abuse, friendship, and vulnerability.
If this all sounds incredibly heavy for a Pixar project, well that’s because it is. It is definitely one of the studio’s most mature works and one that appears to be squarely aimed at an older audience, all while still retaining that special emotional substance that makes me cry during every Pixar film (except the Cars movies).
Perhaps the most impressive part of Kitbull is how Sullivan managed to expertly explore those aforementioned themes while managing to give the story a happy ending, all while keeping the film under nine minutes long. I guess that’s the magic of Pixar for you, they’re simply on a different storytelling level than the rest of us.
Check out Kitbull right here and get some tissues ready because tears will be shed.
