O Filho da Puta/Son of a Bitch

Brazil 2026 Dir: Érica Maradona, Otto Guerra, Tania Anaya, and Sávio Leite 72’00

A gloriously filthy, anarchic animated romp, O Filho da Puta takes family dysfunction, bad behaviour and surreal mayhem and throws them into one beautifully unhinged blender.

Before Ismael has much chance to decide who he is, the village has already decided for him. His mother runs Casa Rosa, the local brothel in Veredas, and he is known simply as the “son of a bitch”- less a nickname than a sentence passed down on him. Carrying a copy of Moby-Dick, the only link to the father he has never known, he sets out across the Brazilian backlands with Bacalhau, his three-legged dog. He is searching for a parent, for the sea, and for a life beyond the identity others have imposed upon him.

At once grotesque, tender and darkly comic, O Filho da Puta inhabits a strange, unruly universe where the boundaries between the intimate and the absurd begin to dissolve. Through bold animation and a mischievous visual language, the film explores family, desire, identity and the strange inheritances that shape us.

There is something deliberately disobedient at the heart of the film: a refusal to behave, explain itself or settle into familiar categories. Its characters move through a world of excess and contradiction, where the ridiculous can turn unexpectedly poignant and the outrageous can reveal something deeply human.

Provocative without losing its sense of play, O Filho da Puta is an invitation to surrender to the unexpected. Strange, sensual and anarchic, it’s a film that lingers somewhere between dream, nightmare and feverish joke—and is best experienced with an open mind and a taste for the wonderfully weird.

This film is screening as part of the 2026 London International Animation Festival, a 10 day event across London and online from November 27 to December 6.

Please visit https://liaf.org.uk/whats-on-liaf-2026 for the full festival details and schedule.

Description supplied by the event organiser.