January 11th, 2022 
Jackson Murphy 
Director Alberto Mielgo’s painted animated short The Windshield Wiper is one of the 15 finalists for the upcoming Best Animated Short Film Academy Award. The Emmy and Annie Award winning Mielgo (of Love, Death & Robots and TRON: Uprising), explores the state of romantic relationships around the world in honest and visually striking ways. He joins me for this Animation Scoop Q&A:
Jackson Murphy: What fascinates you about the question, “What is Love?”
Alberto Mielgo: It is a very old question that has never been really answered. It’s very difficult to define feelings, but we very much need to categorize. It’s something humans always need — to find names for everything. This is very much the best humans could do — put a name on something that is very ambiguous and different from one relationship to another. So, there you go: you have a word with four letters… in several languages, actually. And it’s making the function of a word that doesn’t really describe what it actually is. Making a film about it is obviously super pretentious, but I wanted to define… social love. What is love today? Not so much in a metaphysical or biological way. I didn’t want to get too much into that.
JM: I really *love* many of the stories you come-up with in this, including the couple in the market who are swiping left and right on their phones and they don’t see each other [even though they’re] next to each other. That’s so brilliant. How did you specifically come-up with that storyline?
AM: I like the exposition of a couple that is not ready for commitment — and then you have an old couple (basically the next thing), which is how relationships were in the past, basically commitment. So nowadays the codes have changed. In order to meet people, everybody’s very much into the applications. But at the same time, I feel that a lot of people are not so ready to have relationships because everybody wants to have more freedom or are very into their career or into finding themselves. Before, socially, love was almost mandatory after 16, 17 or 18 years old. It was a short period of time people had between 16 through maybe 25. After 25, if you were not married it was something that was like, “What are you doing with your life?” But now there is way more time to jump into a relationship, and I wanted to reflect what is nowadays and how people are not ready for a commitment.
JM: And you do it really well. I’m in the early to mid ’20s range, and I’m focused on my career right now.
AM: You’re fine.
JM: Thank you! I think you’re right that people can wait longer to get into relationships. And you place this [focal point] man in a cafe — it’s a cool location. Why did you decide on a cafe for him?
AM: Usually after having a meal or perhaps when you’re having coffee — and especially when you’re by yourself — you kind of start wondering about things that maybe worry you. It was a good setting for him to overhear conversations from tables around: a group of men and a group of women who happen to be talking about relationships, which is very much what they usually do. It’s funny how everybody usually doesn’t care that much about relationships, but it’s a subject that matters to groups of people. “Oh my God this girl is not giving a f— about me” or “This guy texted me! What shall I say?” There’s a lot of conversations about that. I wanted to hear what men and women have to say about it. We went very deep on that, and I liked it because it was very spontaneous.
JM: The realism when it comes to the look of this is fantastic. I think about the moments with the homeless man who goes up to the window display and sees the mannequin — and the digital sign is so realistic. How were you able to capture that through the paintings and everything you did?
AM: I’ve been a painter for a very long time. I really like the physics of light. Even though my painting is very much impressionistic, my rules are very much based on the real physics of light: how light reflects on objects. But I tend to simplify it and I tend to use whatever is important to complete the image. That’s what I’ve been doing for a long time — painting. I love realism, and it’s where I feel most comfortable.
JM: It’s extraordinary work, these paintings. And you did them all! That’s amazing. Was there a particular portion of this short that was the most difficult to paint?
AM: No. It’s funny: for me, it doesn’t matter. There’s not more difficulty for one piece or another. Usually when I paint, I don’t think about what I’m painting. I basically deconstruct the image and I don’t see what I’m doing. I’m basically just painting what I see. I do not give any significance to the object. Whether it’s a person or a car or a window, usually for me it’s like a mix of colors and shapes.
JM: This film is based on your global travels. Here it is 2022 now and we’re still thinking about, “Do we want to travel? Do we not want to travel?” And you were able to go around the world and get these experiences to put into this incredible short. Do you really cherish those experiences now more than ever?
AM: The traveling didn’t happen during the last couple of years. This is a compilation of vignettes and experiences of my life. Some of them are five years ago; some of them are ten years ago. But I definitely wanted to be very global and extend it not only to one city [or country]… I didn’t want it to be “This is America” or “This is Asia”… I wanted it to be global. In terms of love, every country shares the same feelings. Love usually is the same in Tibet or Morocco or Spain. Relationships obviously change depending on the culture and the folklore. Usually the feelings are human feelings, and what I wanted is like, “Okay: let’s put it globally in different places so people can understand that this is something a lot of us have in common.”
JM: It’s amazing that you’ve had these stories in your mind for five to ten years, and now they’re finally out there. That’s gotta feel good.
AM: Yeah. It’s very much like a vignette, so in a way it’s not really like a plot. The plot is in your head as an audience. You can imagine what’s happening in whatever of these vignettes. I give you very little information. And that’s because relationships are usually very secret. Even if you are in a relationship because love is so organic, you might not even know how your own relationship works. So when you are from the outside, you know even less. The only thing you can do when you see these vignettes is to guess or to play to guess or just go with the flow and enjoy the visuals — whatever it evokes inside you. That was very important. I didn’t want to give too much information. I wanted the audience to actually have a feeling. There’s no need for you to understand. I just want you to have a feeling when you watch each particular vignette.
JM: One of the lines near the end of it is, “Love is a secret society.” Here’s how I think I interpret it: it’s more exclusive now than it was before, and it may be a little more challenging to get into this secret society of love these days. Do you see that, sort of, in how you wanted to express that line?
AM: Yeah, 100%. There are many meanings, but love is a secret society in that when you’re inside, you know how it works. And when you’re not inside there’s no direction. You cannot buy tickets for love. The secret society has a secret entrance. When you’re there, you get in. And when you’re not, you’re desperate to get there. It’s exclusive. It’s cool. It’s secret. I want to get there [when you’re not in love]. That’s the conclusion of this guy, especially for an outsider. It’s a person that’s probably not in love. He’s in a cafe trying to figure out “What is love?” And all he has is external experiences of people that they might have love or finish or start a relationship — or they meet somebody for the first time. That’s his final say after 15 minutes of thinking.
JM: It’s a great thing to leave people thinking about. You have been through the awards cycle before with several of your other projects. And now here you are on the Oscar shortlist for Animated Short Film! How does it feel and what would an Oscar nomination mean to you?
AM: Well, it gives you some sort of anxiety. I’m usually a kind of nervous person in terms of the possibilities of what could happen. If you think about it, then you don’t sleep that much. But for me, mostly the most important thing — and if it gets nominated that would be a huge thing — is that this film is very much independent. Nobody actually financed it except for myself and my friend Leo Sanchez. We co-produced and co-financed the film. In a way, trying to do independent animation is really risky because there’s no economical reward in a film that’s not a superhero or Avengers or anything like that.
That the members of The Academy might consider a film like that is very good news for animation as well because that means maybe we are opening different doors. This year, especially, seems to be very much about that. We are taking animation very seriously: feature film animation — some of the candidates are definitely not safe, family friendly films or extra commercial in terms of the look and the possibility of selling tons of merchandise. And the short films as well. All the shortlisted films are… most of them… extremely independent and smart stories that are not necessarily for kids. I’m very proud of this shortlist and very proud to be among these choices because it seems The Academy is taking it very seriously.
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