Since mid-July this year, an animation has been filmed in a studio on Rua do Zambeze, in Porto, in which António Rosa Casaco, the PIDE inspector who headed the brigade that murdered General Humberto Delgado, embodies a pink coat.
This universe of faceless characters is being created at the headquarters of Animais, by Mónica Santos, who co-directed with Alice Guimarães the films Amélia & Duarte (2015) and Entre Sombras (2018) – the latter nominated for Césares, the “Oscars” of French cinema, in the category of Best Animated Short Film.
This time, using stop motion, pixelation and puppet animation, the Porto filmmaker moves away from the human figure (so far the protagonist in her work), to make a political musical inspired by children’s imagination: “Casaco Rosa seems like a cute figure, but throughout the film, which takes place inside a house, we see that he is responsible for acts of fraud and persecution… And we discover who this character really is”, explains the director. A character who “is not a Salazar, is not a Hitler”, but whose function is essential to maintaining the power of the dictators: “They are the ones who are in the second line, but actually make things happen.”
