TITO AND THE BIRDS (Tito e os Pássaros )
A Film by Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar, and André Catoto
Written by Eduardo Benaim and Gustavo Steinberg
North American Premiere at Toronto International Film Festival 2018
Catch the film festival movie trailer for Tito and the Birds
A marvelous dystopian adventure of a boy and his friends battling a culture of fear that is infecting their world, new animated feature Tito and the Birds is a stunning work of filmmaking with a socially relevant story. Mixing expressionist influences with a vibrant palette and a variety of animation techniques (created using oil paintings, digital drawings, and graphic animation), this gorgeously animated feature tells an uplifting and insightful adventure about a boy fighting to find out what is right and to learn how to overcome his own fear.
Directed by Gustavo Steinberg (End of the Line), Gabriel Bitar (Cidade Cinza), and André Catoto (Say I Am Only Seventeen), and written by Eduardo Benaim and Gustavo Steinberg, Tito and the Birds premiered in competition earlier this year at the 2018 Annecy International Animated Film Festival to great audience enthusiasm and won the Best Feature at Anima Mundi 2018. The film will have its North American premiere at Toronto International Film Festival this September ahead of its theatrical launch later this year.
Movie synopsis
Tito and the Birds is a film about a little boy and his journey to save the world.
Tito, a shy 10-year-old boy, lives in a world on the brink of pandemic. Fear is crippling people, making them sick and transforming them. Tito realizes, based on his father’s past research, that there may be a way to utilize the local pigeon population and their songs to create a cure for the disease. His father was forced to leave when Tito was only six and the struggle to find a cure becomes linked with the search to find his father again, along with his own identity.
Part action part drama, Tito’s journey is at once an uplifting and insightful adventure about a boy fighting to find out what is right and to learn how to overcome his own fear.
Directed by: Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar, and André Catoto
Written by: Eduardo Benaim and Gustavo Steinberg
Producers: Gustavo Steinberg, Daniel Greco, Felipe Sabino, and Brenda Wooding
Production companies: Bits Productions, Split Studio
Editor: Vânia Debs, Thiago Ozelami
Original Score: Gustavo Kurlat and Ruben Feffer
Sound: Ultrassom Music Ideas
Principal Voice Cast (Portugese):
Matheus Nachtergaele, Denise Fraga, Mateus Solano, Otávio Augusto, Pedro Henrique
Brazil, 2018
Portuguese with English subtitles
Gustavo Steinberg was born in São Paulo in 1973. He has produced six feature films, directed two and written the screenplay for four movies since 1995. His previous films have won awards such as Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival, Digital Award at the 60th Venice Film Festival, Official selection in the 37th New York Film Festival, Young Jury Award at the 53rd Locarno Film Festival, Best Documentary in the Latin American Los Angeles Film Festival, among others.
Before co-directing Tito and the Birds, Gabriel Bittar has worked on title sequences and animations for several TV shows and feature films in Brazil such as Tropicália, Cidade Cinza, and Tim Maia. His unique identity is defined by his wide range of skills using mixed media on all of his projects. His personal work involves painting, etching, photography, and he is also part of Várzea Ilustrada, a multimedia collective responsible for interactive multimedia projection and live animations. Four times winner at the short film festival Festival do Minuto in Brazil. He has also produced, animated and directed the short film, The City, and Desire No5. Gabriel is a partner at Veranito, an animation studio based in São Paulo, where Tito and The Birds was composed.