Director Alejandra Pérez González makes her feature film debut with My Friend the Sun, premiered at the Guadalajara Film Festival. The film follows Xóchitl, a girl who discovers ancestral forces from pre-Hispanic mythology while navigating life with her working father. The boundary between the modern and the mythical fades in a journey about cultural heritage and family bonds.
Technical development: 2D animation with handcrafted textures 🌟
The animation team combined digital techniques with hand-drawn elements to recreate the aesthetic of pre-Hispanic codices. The lighting emulates the sun's natural light, shifting from warm to cool tones depending on the emotion of each scene. The sound design incorporates pre-Columbian instruments such as the teponaztli and the ocarina, recorded in the fields of Oaxaca. The limited budget forced resource optimization: watercolor-painted backgrounds and characters animated at 12 frames per second, creating a unique visual style without resorting to high costs.
What happens when you mix mythology with utility bills 😅
Xóchitl discovers that pre-Hispanic gods also have work schedule problems. While her dad works overtime, she negotiates with a Quetzalcoatl who only appears when there's WiFi. The most ironic part is that the ancestral sacrifice the girl must make turns out to be giving up her screen time. In the end, the magic isn't in the rituals, but in her father arriving home for dinner before ten o'clock at night.