The voting for the animation nominees on the Oscars shortlist kicks off on Monday and runs throughout the week, with the winners being announced on the 9th of January. Because of this, lots of creatives behind indie animations that have managed to make the shortlist have been speaking with us to help promote their films.
One such filmmaker, Alexandre Siqueira, a Portugal native, director, and writer, recently chatted exclusively with us about his animated film, Purpleboy. The animation style is 2D and the story explores gender identity and conformity in society.
Purpleboy utilizes plenty of symbolism in order to pack plenty of story into a short animation, so we took the opportunity to ask Siqueira about the meaning behind some of it. When chatting, Alexandre told us a lot about why he chose to express Oscar's identity in the way that he did and his version of bringing the patriarchal society to life in an animated form.
You can hear filmmaker, writer, and director exclusively speak with us about Purpleboy below. This portion of the transcript has also been included, along with the trailer for the animation at the bottom.
"I wanted to have a male character, and I didn't want to explore too much the biological element, but I think we can see that biologically talking, this character has a female body, female genitalia. I didn't want to explore too much, but knowing about the problems that the characters, the parents, when they see how much he Oscar claims to be a boy, because he said, literally, if you verbalize, 'I'm a boy, and I'm a man, and I'm Oscar.'
So we see this male universe and all these elements that we have in the film, we have the prologue in the beginning, we can see the seeds, we can see elements. So the beginning was important for me to say that he was not educated to be like that, he was born like that. But at the same time, we can see that he's seduced by this male universe; the father, that is this military parachutist and all these elements."
If you're interested in what Alexandre has to say, we've included two more clips from our conversation with him along with the trailer and synopsis for Purpleboy below.
Siqueira speaks about how science influenced his passion for animation:
Siqueira teases his upcoming project and plans to tackle euthanasia:
*This interview has been edited for clarity.*
An incredible world and vision by filmmaker Alexandre Siqueira, Purpleboy tells the story of gender identity and conformity through the eyes of a child and his extraordinary but painful adventure. The 2D animation paints a fantastical world that is beautifully unique yet familiar with characters and symbolism.
Oscar is a child who sprouts in his parents garden. Nobody knows his biological sex but he claims the masculine gender. One day Oscar lives an extraordinary but painful adventure in an authoritarian and oppressive world. Will he manage to have the identity recognition he desires so much?
What do you think about the trailer for Purpleboy? Share your thoughts in the usual spot!