Emptiness
Austin, Texas | Film Short
Animation, Drama
Emptiness is a powerful metaphor for so much that weighs on the chests of countless parents throughout the world. The film attempts to portray the beauty of parenthood and the resulting frustrations, indignation, fear, and sense of loss that violence perpetuates against children everywhere.
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This campaign raised $9,157 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
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Emptiness is a powerful metaphor for so much that weighs on the chests of countless parents throughout the world. The film attempts to portray the beauty of parenthood and the resulting frustrations, indignation, fear, and sense of loss that violence perpetuates against children everywhere.
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
We are a group of recent graduates focused on telling a story that empathizes with Gea, our protagonist, and her crisis. Our artistic emphasis showcases a roller coaster of emotions, both visual and musical, without saying a word.
“The film’s simplicity of story and illustration dramatically communicates the anguish and void that no news story could ever capture,” - Soco Aguilar, producer
Emptiness is a heartwarming animated story introducing Gea (/hā-a/), a graceful songbird (swallow) who has just become a mother of three. The story unfolds through her eyes until tragedy takes her by surprise—influencing a gut-wrenchingly search with a bittersweet ending.
This story was born from an apparently insignificant event in which a swallow lost her babies due to mother nature’s doings. However, the project's creator Soco Aguilar saw something deeper than what appeared at first glance. Soco had recently had a terrifying experience in which her own children were put in significant danger, and she couldn't assist them immediately. The metaphor evolved into something bigger: the hundreds of thousands of cases of people who forcibly disappear in Mexico.
Soco Aguilar was a documentary producer for PBS, BBC, the Discovery Channel, and several independent projects for nine years from San Francisco. She won the Ariel (Mexico’s equivalent to the Oscar) in 2008 for best animated feature production, La Leyenda de la Nahuala (which influenced a spin-off series sold to Disney in 2021). Universal Pictures Latin America distributed her two previous feature films.
According to the BBC, Mexico marked a grim milestone in 2022, with the number of people officially listed as disappeared at more than 100,000.
“The scourge of disappearances is a human tragedy of enormous proportions,” said Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
This troubling data showcases that thousands of women mark Mother’s Day in Mexico each year as the occasion to continue their desperate mission to discover what happened to their missing children.
These circumstances aligned in such a way that telling this story at this time was the best option to express our discomfort towards this situation.
“Emptiness represents the opportunity to illuminate a real and painful subject through animation and the talent of many that will, hopefully, inspire a thoughtful and transformative message and help create needed perspective.”
- Ricardo Varela, director
What sets our project apart is the fact that we can experiment however we like, with no ties to a specific style or practice. We took advantage of this freedom by using 2D animation, finding this technique to be the best way to paint a picture of our narrative. Our story is highly emotional, and we used creative techniques to illuminate and amplify this. And having no dialogue forced us to make the most of color and acting, and deliver our message as fluidly as possible.
“Working on Emptiness has meant embracing the difficult challenge of delivering a tough, important message without uttering a single word.” - Ale Cienfuegos, art director
The main inspirations for our short film were Duet, by Glenn Keane, and If Anything Happens I Love You, by Michael Govier and Will McCormack. What we loved about these films are the color and simpleness of the shorts to tell a powerful story. The techniques used are different and special in their own way. It helped to maximize their message—and what we want to achieve with our film.
Despite our best efforts, we still have many challenges ahead. We are working remotely from many cities in Mexico, with each one of us with our own hardware and resources. This project is made from the heart and soul, and any money that we raise will pay for the music, sound design, image and sound post-production, visual effects, and color correction in advance of our release. We need your help to achieve our goal and prove that even a group of recent graduates with a heartfelt story and the right encouragement can create a high-quality project.
As of 09-November, we finished the first draft rough animation, and are moving to the clean up department. Simultaneously, the art department is working on applying color to the backgrounds. We have less than a month left in production before our release date of 09-December. Cinemex, Mexico's second largest theater group, has granted us the opportunity to premiere our film in one of their theatres in Mexico City. We urgently need your support to be able to take Emptiness to the big screen.
Once we finish the premiere (which will also be held virtually), we plan to send our film to festivals such as Annecy, Morelia, Guadalajara, among others. Our purpose is to share this story: its metaphor and heart and soul, to the world and test how far we can go!
In the case of achieving more than we are asking for, we will be able to distribute this money among all the members of the Emptiness team in support of their professional pathes forward.
Help us make this dream come true!!!
Thank you - Gracias - Merci - Grazie - Tänan - Danke - Obrigada - Obrigado - Terima kasih - Cпасибо - Choukrane - ευχαριστώ - Arigatô - Շնորհակալություն - mahalo - Děkuji - Ngiyabonga - Takk - M̀h’gōi - Gràcies - Hvala
From the 
team
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Festival's Fees
Costs $1,000
Felstivals are a very important part for networking, to meet new people, talents, or even investors.
Sound Design
Costs $2,500
In animation we need to create every little sound, by recording foleys and designing the sound.
Score Composition and Recording
Costs $3,500
In our short we need to convey complex emotions. Original music is the way to achieve this goal.
Color Correction
Costs $1,000
High quality is necessary for festivals and any film projection.
DCP and Other Deliverables
Costs $1,250
We need to have a high quality DCP and copies to be able to apply to festivals
Copyrights, Trademark Fees and Legal Advice
Costs $2,000
To protect our audiovisual creation, not only as a shortfilm, but also registering each character.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Ricardo Varela - Director
He's a 2D animator and character designer based in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He has been part of different projects with hand-drawn animation as an assistant animator and supervising animator until he made his own short film, KIKITO. He has also been the character designer of many of those projects. He also has stop-motion experience as a supervising animator and character designer for the student short film Nosfe.
Soco Aguilar - Producer/writer
She's an award-winning Mexicana filmmaker and single mom who paused eight years to raise three kids (now all in college). She's back with a fully-developed live-action feature that she wrote. Based in San Miguel de Allende and Austin, and a native of Mexico City, she was educated in San Francisco. After college, she worked in San Francisco for nine years as a documentary film and TV producer for PBS, BBC, and the Discovery Channel. After returning to Mexico City, she won the Ariel (Mexico’s equivalent to the Oscar) for best-animated feature production. Universal Pictures distributed her last two features—one live-action, the other 2D animation. In 2020, The New Yorker named Lourdes Portillo´s “The Devil Never Sleeps,” the first film she helped produce, as one of the top documentary films ever made. The first documentary that she produced was shot in 1994 on location in Chiapas, Mexico, focusing on the genesis of the Zapatista movement. She also served as an adjunct film professor at Monterrey Institute of Technology.
Sofía Glyka - Associate Producer
She's a Mexican producer who loves telling stories. Being part of the process of helping other people tell their stories is what makes her enjoy the production process. For her, it's like making dreams come true. She has worked in two other short films: "Xocolatl," an animated short nominated for the Chinelo prize in the Pixelatl Festival, and "Lo de Siempre," a live action short.
Alejandra Cienfuegos - Art Director
She's a Mexican visual development and environment artist who enjoys experimenting with traditional and digital techniques to create emotional stories through images. Her passion for art drives her to keep looking for new projects that may teach me ways to improve my work. She has experience in the art department of stop-motion and 2D animation short films.
Erick Alcántara
Erick Alcántara is a Mexican composer and sound designer from Querétaro. He has composed for short films since he was 17 years old, and since then has worked on national and international productions. Some projects he has composed music and did the sound design have been part of film festivals worldwide, being in official selections and nominations alike. Pixelatl, Feratum, Vibrart, Shorts México and Arieles are some of the festivals and contests his work has been showcased. He is a multi-instrumentalist (piano, guitar, drums, synths) and loves combining the score with the sound design for a higher sound experience.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
We are a group of recent graduates focused on telling a story that empathizes with Gea, our protagonist, and her crisis. Our artistic emphasis showcases a roller coaster of emotions, both visual and musical, without saying a word.
“The film’s simplicity of story and illustration dramatically communicates the anguish and void that no news story could ever capture,” - Soco Aguilar, producer
Emptiness is a heartwarming animated story introducing Gea (/hā-a/), a graceful songbird (swallow) who has just become a mother of three. The story unfolds through her eyes until tragedy takes her by surprise—influencing a gut-wrenchingly search with a bittersweet ending.
This story was born from an apparently insignificant event in which a swallow lost her babies due to mother nature’s doings. However, the project's creator Soco Aguilar saw something deeper than what appeared at first glance. Soco had recently had a terrifying experience in which her own children were put in significant danger, and she couldn't assist them immediately. The metaphor evolved into something bigger: the hundreds of thousands of cases of people who forcibly disappear in Mexico.
Soco Aguilar was a documentary producer for PBS, BBC, the Discovery Channel, and several independent projects for nine years from San Francisco. She won the Ariel (Mexico’s equivalent to the Oscar) in 2008 for best animated feature production, La Leyenda de la Nahuala (which influenced a spin-off series sold to Disney in 2021). Universal Pictures Latin America distributed her two previous feature films.
According to the BBC, Mexico marked a grim milestone in 2022, with the number of people officially listed as disappeared at more than 100,000.
“The scourge of disappearances is a human tragedy of enormous proportions,” said Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
This troubling data showcases that thousands of women mark Mother’s Day in Mexico each year as the occasion to continue their desperate mission to discover what happened to their missing children.
These circumstances aligned in such a way that telling this story at this time was the best option to express our discomfort towards this situation.
“Emptiness represents the opportunity to illuminate a real and painful subject through animation and the talent of many that will, hopefully, inspire a thoughtful and transformative message and help create needed perspective.”
- Ricardo Varela, director
What sets our project apart is the fact that we can experiment however we like, with no ties to a specific style or practice. We took advantage of this freedom by using 2D animation, finding this technique to be the best way to paint a picture of our narrative. Our story is highly emotional, and we used creative techniques to illuminate and amplify this. And having no dialogue forced us to make the most of color and acting, and deliver our message as fluidly as possible.
“Working on Emptiness has meant embracing the difficult challenge of delivering a tough, important message without uttering a single word.” - Ale Cienfuegos, art director
The main inspirations for our short film were Duet, by Glenn Keane, and If Anything Happens I Love You, by Michael Govier and Will McCormack. What we loved about these films are the color and simpleness of the shorts to tell a powerful story. The techniques used are different and special in their own way. It helped to maximize their message—and what we want to achieve with our film.
Despite our best efforts, we still have many challenges ahead. We are working remotely from many cities in Mexico, with each one of us with our own hardware and resources. This project is made from the heart and soul, and any money that we raise will pay for the music, sound design, image and sound post-production, visual effects, and color correction in advance of our release. We need your help to achieve our goal and prove that even a group of recent graduates with a heartfelt story and the right encouragement can create a high-quality project.
As of 09-November, we finished the first draft rough animation, and are moving to the clean up department. Simultaneously, the art department is working on applying color to the backgrounds. We have less than a month left in production before our release date of 09-December. Cinemex, Mexico's second largest theater group, has granted us the opportunity to premiere our film in one of their theatres in Mexico City. We urgently need your support to be able to take Emptiness to the big screen.
Once we finish the premiere (which will also be held virtually), we plan to send our film to festivals such as Annecy, Morelia, Guadalajara, among others. Our purpose is to share this story: its metaphor and heart and soul, to the world and test how far we can go!
In the case of achieving more than we are asking for, we will be able to distribute this money among all the members of the Emptiness team in support of their professional pathes forward.
Help us make this dream come true!!!
Thank you - Gracias - Merci - Grazie - Tänan - Danke - Obrigada - Obrigado - Terima kasih - Cпасибо - Choukrane - ευχαριστώ - Arigatô - Շնորհակալություն - mahalo - Děkuji - Ngiyabonga - Takk - M̀h’gōi - Gràcies - Hvala
From the team
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Festival's Fees
Costs $1,000
Felstivals are a very important part for networking, to meet new people, talents, or even investors.
Sound Design
Costs $2,500
In animation we need to create every little sound, by recording foleys and designing the sound.
Score Composition and Recording
Costs $3,500
In our short we need to convey complex emotions. Original music is the way to achieve this goal.
Color Correction
Costs $1,000
High quality is necessary for festivals and any film projection.
DCP and Other Deliverables
Costs $1,250
We need to have a high quality DCP and copies to be able to apply to festivals
Copyrights, Trademark Fees and Legal Advice
Costs $2,000
To protect our audiovisual creation, not only as a shortfilm, but also registering each character.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Ricardo Varela - Director
He's a 2D animator and character designer based in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He has been part of different projects with hand-drawn animation as an assistant animator and supervising animator until he made his own short film, KIKITO. He has also been the character designer of many of those projects. He also has stop-motion experience as a supervising animator and character designer for the student short film Nosfe.
Soco Aguilar - Producer/writer
She's an award-winning Mexicana filmmaker and single mom who paused eight years to raise three kids (now all in college). She's back with a fully-developed live-action feature that she wrote. Based in San Miguel de Allende and Austin, and a native of Mexico City, she was educated in San Francisco. After college, she worked in San Francisco for nine years as a documentary film and TV producer for PBS, BBC, and the Discovery Channel. After returning to Mexico City, she won the Ariel (Mexico’s equivalent to the Oscar) for best-animated feature production. Universal Pictures distributed her last two features—one live-action, the other 2D animation. In 2020, The New Yorker named Lourdes Portillo´s “The Devil Never Sleeps,” the first film she helped produce, as one of the top documentary films ever made. The first documentary that she produced was shot in 1994 on location in Chiapas, Mexico, focusing on the genesis of the Zapatista movement. She also served as an adjunct film professor at Monterrey Institute of Technology.
Sofía Glyka - Associate Producer
She's a Mexican producer who loves telling stories. Being part of the process of helping other people tell their stories is what makes her enjoy the production process. For her, it's like making dreams come true. She has worked in two other short films: "Xocolatl," an animated short nominated for the Chinelo prize in the Pixelatl Festival, and "Lo de Siempre," a live action short.
Alejandra Cienfuegos - Art Director
She's a Mexican visual development and environment artist who enjoys experimenting with traditional and digital techniques to create emotional stories through images. Her passion for art drives her to keep looking for new projects that may teach me ways to improve my work. She has experience in the art department of stop-motion and 2D animation short films.
Erick Alcántara
Erick Alcántara is a Mexican composer and sound designer from Querétaro. He has composed for short films since he was 17 years old, and since then has worked on national and international productions. Some projects he has composed music and did the sound design have been part of film festivals worldwide, being in official selections and nominations alike. Pixelatl, Feratum, Vibrart, Shorts México and Arieles are some of the festivals and contests his work has been showcased. He is a multi-instrumentalist (piano, guitar, drums, synths) and loves combining the score with the sound design for a higher sound experience.