João Gonzalez directs Ice Merchants, one of the 15 2023 Academy Awards Best Animated Short Film finalists. It’s about a father and son who live in a house on the edge of a cliff. Each day, they dive way, way down, providing ice to townspeople. Their lives are exciting… and quite dangerous. Gonzalez details the making of Ice Merchants in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This interview was conducted as an Email Q&A and was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: What did you want to explore with this unique father-son relationship?

João Gonzalez: I believe that the film explores metaphorically how those small interactions and rituals that we have with our close ones everyday (in this case between the father and son), even if we almost take them from granted and don’t pay too much attention to them, are part of the foundation of meaningful human relationships. And that “foundation” grows stronger every day. Although it is a film mainly about loss, I think it is hopeful at the same time.

JM: Why did you choose red, blue and white as your main colors?

JG: I normally work with limited color palettes that, not only please me aesthetically speaking but that, more importantly, have an active role conceptually in the film I’m making. In this case it was very important for me to find a color palette that would contrast the coziness and warmth of their house and the characters’ (oranges and reds) with the coldness and the vastness of the outside world where they inhabit.

JM: You present such depth in the animation. It’s incredible. How did you set out to accomplish this?

JG: Thank you so much! I was always very interested in perspective and tri-dimensionality in drawing since I was a kid, so I guess I ended up naturally incorporating it in my illustration style, which transposed to my animation later in life. I was also very lucky to be able to collaborate with Ala Nunu on this project (the other half of our two-person animation team, constituted by me and her) because I believe she is one of the best animators in the world, both in technical and artistic terms, transposing a lot of emotion into her animation and characters’ actions. I learned a lot by having the privilege of having her on the team.

JM: How did you get the right sounds/sound effects for mechanisms and specific noises?

JG: That’s all thanks to my amazing sound-designer Ed Trousseau! He does magic! I also believe that the fact that we started working on the sound from the beginning of the film’s production, like we did for the music, helped everything come together in a more organic way. We really focused on making sure that the sound-design/ambience was as immersive as possible.

JM: How did you choose which key moments would be quieter than others?

JG: One of the things that I learned while working as the composer for my films is that sometimes silence, or just no music, can be the most powerful addition to the visuals of a particular scene. I actually initially composed more music bits for the film that I ended up taking out. I felt they were “too much” for a specific scene and would even take away some power from the visuals. Again, I think the fact that I started composing the soundtrack from the beginning of the film’s production gave me enough time to understand and evaluate what (at least I believe) each scene really needed either music or sound wise, even if it meant taking out music parts I composed and ended up not using.

JM: Without giving away everything, what kinds of symbolism/themes did you want to show in the final section?

JG: I wanted to show the portrait of a family that loved and supported each other, in all the major phases of life, without showing any flashbacks to the past. I wanted people to contemplate the impact that those small daily rituals (that maybe not even we pay much attention to during the film), every day, had in this family’s life in the long term.

JM: How were you able to grow as a filmmaker?

JG: Firstly, I was very lucky to have failed my math exam that was going to put me into Engineering School, because that made me go to my second option in college which was a Multimedia Arts BA, where I found my love for animation! Secondly, I was extremely lucky to have surrounded myself with amazing people, that not only made me grow artistically and technically speaking, but also as a person.

JM: Are you a fan of heights?

JG: I really am! Hugely fascinated by it! I was also always fascinated with architecture and drawing tall buildings from very far away, so I think that my interest in heights is also connected with that.

JM: What would an Academy Award nomination for “Ice Merchants” mean to you?

JG: To be honest it’s something that it’s very hard for me to conceptualize. This project’s path during the last months was something that completely surpassed my wildest expectations, since I started making it as my graduation film from the Royal College of Art. We had the insane privilege of having the film premiere and be awarded in Cannes, which is something that even now, roughly seven to eight months after, is still very surreal and difficult for me to process. I’m very proud of sharing this shortlist with another Portuguese film, the beautiful The Garbage Man by the great Laura Gonçalves, and I think that a nomination for either of these films would be a very important step in Portugal to raise awareness about the high quality of Portuguese Authorial Animation, which hugely inspired me to pursue this artistic area, and that sadly is not very celebrated by Portuguese media.

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Jackson Murphy

Jackson Murphy is a movie critic and entertainment columnist. He is the creator of the website Lights-Camera-Jackson.com, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.

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