SXSW 2021 Animated Shorts Roundup: ‘Rendang of Death,’ ‘Nuevo Rico’ Deliver Shorts of Substance, Style, and Humor

I’ve spent four days of the festival examining the various shorts programs at SXSW and have been decidedly pleased with the films this festival has brought to the fore. Some of the standouts to me have been in the documentary shorts program (“The Box,” “ Plant Heist”), while the narrative shorts have offered other such great programming such as “The Nipple Whisperer” and “Femme.” SXSW has done an amazing job at gathering shorts, and some of the most beautiful shots I’ve seen have been contained in these sub-twenty minute runs. 

Last on the list, as the film festival comes to a close is the ‘Animated Shorts’ category. I have to say, I’m not too familiar with this genre, as most of my short work has hitherto been focused on narratives and some documentaries. But, boy was I in for a surprise as to what the animated shorts field had such to offer. Visuals alone can set apart this short group from their counterparts; not constrained by live action and physical actors, they can bring some of the most engaging and enticing pictures (think “Grave of the Fireflies,” which is considered by many to be one of the greatest war films ever made).

For this roundup, I will be focusing on two films, Percolate Galactic’s “Rendang of Death” and Kristian Mercado’s “Nuevo Rico.” 

First up is “Rendang of Death,” a calamity of a film that is as chaotic as it is enticing. I mean, there’s not much of a plot here: we see the inside of a diner which appears to be sometime in the future. The diner serves ‘rendang,’ a sort of meat-looking plump that appears in the middle of bowl of goop that looks as appetizing as something you’d see in the old cartoon “Ren and Stimpy.” But these people love it. When the patron asks for a couple more pieces of rendang, and they are told the restaurant is currently out of it, all hell breaks loose. And by hell, I mean hell. The scene turns into a straight-up donnybrook of murder and violence. If you’ve ever seen “Hellraiser: Hell on Earth,” and the infamous party scene, you’ll know what to expect. 

I mean there’s not a lot to analyze here, just an enormous amount of fun to be had. The patrons of the diner, in the quest to eat the last remaining piece of rendang (god this stuff must be good) simply eviscerate each other. Knifings, stabbings, decapitations, implications with ceiling fans, forks, plates, swords, hands being dissolved by acid, dinosaurs appearing out of nowhere to snap someone in half at the waist, bones sticking out, bones all that remain…you name it, it happens. The second someone gets close to grabbing that sumptuous rendang, some awful injury occurs, and then it continues on, ad nauseaum. 

And I have to say, if you’re squeamish, this isn’t the movie for you. Of course these are cartoon characters, so its toned down, but this is a gore-fest that runs for most of the movie’s time on-screen. Sometimes all we need is a film filled with pure violent escapism, and “Rendang of Death” is certainly that film. The way it ends is comical, and I’m sure somewhere on the underbelly the filmmakers are trying to say something about society, about the impossibility to share, have patience, or be anything less than a demanding customer, but its buried under chaos so deep little else seeps through. It ends perfectly, and I was left extremely pleased. Definitely the most fun I’ve had during an animated film, and one you should check out if you have the chance. 

Next we have Kristian Mercado’s “Nuevo Rico,” a dystopian animated short which garnered a Jury Award for its category at this year’s SXSW. Descriptively, the film is about a brother and sister living in a dystopian society, chased into the woods after sabotaging a manufacturing plant, and they come across several deities who seek a savior for the island. The ultimate conflict is as these siblings debate how to move on: create a new world in the vein of what they would have liked their old home of Puerto Rico, or create something else. They clash heads, and the whole thing is very atmospheric and illusory. 

But, buried within Mercado’s vision are several things that make this film stick, things that make it more than meets the eye. For instance, it opens on a billboard written in Spanish and English with a welcoming message in English that is written over negatively in Spanish. There’s also the the far off visage of a huge wall, which I can only take to symbolize the theorized American border wall, and the fact that the man who adorns the billboard represents ex-American president Donald Trump in almost every way that matters. The ideas of intolerance and looming change hang over “Nuevo Rico” starkly and decisively. 

The animation is a marvel. It starts off as sleek, psychedelic city streets that soon give way to desperate wastelands and the floating heads of swirling gods that give advice, question, critique, etc. But a theme runs through this, reminiscent of literature like “Lord of the Flies” or even sci-fi films like “Reign of Fire”—what happens when a civilization gets the chance to start over? Do we truly transcend the sins and mistakes of our ancestors, or are we destined to commit them again and again? “Nuevo Rico” smartly makes this question illusory and perhaps unanswerable. It’s not so much a point the characters consider, but the filmmakers intimating it is a point worth considering. The film’s stellar animation makes it much easier to do so. 

All-in-all, “Nuevo Rico” is a smart film, an engaging one, and a philosophical one. It’s the last short I watched for this year’s SXSW and is a memorable one to wrap up this year’s virtual festival.