Alberto Mielgo, the Spanish animator aiming for the Oscar with an ode to love

Magdalene Tsanis Culture, 24 Mar He has been working in the world of animation for more than two decades for giants such as Disney, Netflix and Sony, but Alberto Mielgo has won an Oscar nomination with his most personal bet, “The Windshield Whiper” (“The Windshield Wiper”), a poetic short film that reflects on love. “I have disassociated myself a little from commercial work, I would like animation to go along different paths that people are used to, that family cinema from 0 to 99 years old”, tells Efe Mielgo (Madrid, 1979), winner of three Emmys for the short film “The Witness” that he shot for the series “Love, death and robots” and which is also placed on the path of that different animation. Self-taught, Mielgo discovered his passion from a very young age when he was given a Tintin comic book and at the age of six he started making them himself. “I never went to a professional school except for a few months but I had to quit because I couldn't afford it,” he says. He has lived in London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo and Los Angeles, where he has been established for more than a decade, although he spends long periods in Madrid, where he has his production company, Pinkman, with whom he shot this short film that could win the Oscar next Sunday, co-produced with fellow Spaniard Leo Sánchez Studios. “We both started out of nowhere and have grown,” says Mielgo, also a painter and author of the designs for “The Windshield Wiper” at the head of a team of more than 40 people. “Animation needs a lot of people, both artists and technicians,” he says. In London he worked making storyboards for Tim Burton's “Corpse Bride” (“Corpse Bride”), for the Harry Potter saga or Gorillaz music videos, and with Disney's “TRON: Uprising” (“TRON: Uprising”) series he won his first Emmy. Already in Los Angeles, he assumed the art direction of “Spiderman: A New Universe” (“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”) although he left it due to artistic differences. Mielgo believes that this is a very good time for animation in Spain because there is a lot of talent and good help, both from the central and regional governments. “We are not yet at a time when Spain invests 70 million in a project, which is actually a small budget for animation, but there are grants and incentives for a foreign investor to come and work in Spain; I work with Netflix and foreign investors from my studio in Spain and I am delighted.” “The windshield wiper”, which had its presentation at the Cannes Film Festival and can be seen open on thewindshieldwiper.com, starts inside a cafe where a man asks himself what love is and with a fragmented narrative he stops for fifteen minutes at different times, from a crossing of eyes in apartments to a self-absorbed couple on Tinder in a supermarket. “Love has changed a lot, in the past it made sense to have children the more the better to have labor in the countryside, today we are more individualistic, it has nothing to do with it, it's not that it's better or worse, I don't criticize it, it's just a look at where love is now,” he explains. Mielgo will be one of four Spanish representatives at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles next Sunday, along with Javier Bardem, nominated for “Being the Ricardos” (“Being the Ricardos”) and Penelope Cruz and composer Alberto Iglesias, for “Parallel Mothers”. “I'm a super fan of all three, Penelope and Javier love me since 'Jamón, Jamón' and I think it's incredible that they're a couple, it's so beautiful... and Alberto Iglesias seems to me to be one of the best composers today, there are other nominees who are gimmickers, but Alberto is a classical composer,” he emphasizes. Regarding the fact that his category and that of Churches are two of those excluded from the live ceremony, Mielgo sees the controversy that he has aroused exaggerated. “It's going to be a fake live show, it's recorded an hour before with the theater full and the only thing is that they're going to edit it, but then it's going to be televised anyway,” he explains. Although he confesses that he worried himself at first, he says that he was calm as soon as they explained it to him from the Hollywood Academy. “The next day the war broke out and we already said, 'with the one who is falling, what does it matter if they give us the prize an hour earlier. '” CHIEF mt/cg