4/5
Gabriel Bitar, André Catoto, and Gustavo Steinberg’s Tito and the Birds is a breathtakingly gorgeous work of Brazilian animation about the ways fear is used by those in power to exploit and divide us. Using the outbreak of a disease across the globe as its central metaphor for ways fear, hatred, and division spread from person to person, the film’s young hero and his friends must find a way to communicate with the birds to find a cure for this fear before it’s too late. Watching this in the midst of an actual pandemic requires a certain amount of distancing, reminding yourself that the outbreak is a metaphor for other concerns. And even though the final act relies a little to heavily on the children’s action movie formula, it’s still such a beautiful and emotionally moving film with absolutely dazzling animation.
