Unicorn Wars is an Anti-Fable With a Strong Message

Depending on how well you know Alberto Vázquez’s works, Unicorn Wars is more of more of a precautionary tale.

Unciron WarsGKIDS
Coming to theatres and VOD Mar 10, 2023
Played at the Victoria Film Festival Feb 9th

Anyone enamoured with the colourful visual teases from the trailers for Unicorn Wars by Alberto Vázquez will get more than an anti-fable presented to them. That’s how this filmmaker describes his work. Here, his animated work looks at the conflict for power at the Magic Forest, where the teddy bears here are taught a myth where if one can kill and drink the blood of the last unicorn, they will be king. The idea is a nastier spin on what Lord Voldemort believed in the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and the cost looks worse!

The rivalry between these two species is age-old, and as for who is truly pure, we’re not meant to really know for certain. I don’t want to side with either given how horrible the depths of hatred runs deep.

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[Fantasia 2019] On Night God and the Auteur–Adikhan Yerzhanov

Night GodAdditional Screening
Thu Aug 01 5:30 PM
Salle J.A. De Sève

Fantasia 2019
Montreal, Quebec

Adilkhan Yerzhanov‘s Night God (Nochnoy Bog) is more than a trippy meditation about the life found in the outskirts of Russia. It’s hard to describe because the plot meanders. The film opens with a pair of workers, just having a conversation, and they see the red tails of what I feel are rockets being launched into space than falling debris–much less a comet (the latter appear as smudges in one point in the sky than wander the horizon). One individual asks, “What is the meaning of it all?”

The response is simply in the fact neither have seen anything like that in their life. They don’t even hint of knowing military exercises are going on elsewhere (the most plausible explanation of what they saw). They are more concerned about their own self being since they believe the world is ready to self destruct. Curiously, we don’t know who everyone is. They’re nameless.

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