Arnold is a middle-aged mouse in existential crisis, increasingly convinced that the world around him is fake. While his wife María tries to hold their life together, Arnold sees manipulation everywhere: in their neighbours, their doctors, their friends and above all in ALMA, the all-powerful corporation that controls the city.
His rebellion begins as paranoia and gradually turns into certainty. The more Arnold searches for something real, the more trapped he becomes inside a system built on obedience, debt and manufactured happiness. But even when escape seems impossible, love, friendship and a stubborn refusal to surrender offer one final chance to break free.
Blending surreal animation, black comedy and existential horror, Decorado is a melancholy and furious fable about depression, conformity and the fear that our lives may be shaped by forces we can barely see.
A decade after Birdboy: The Forgotten Children screened at Lund Fantastic, Alberto Vázquez returns with another haunting work of adult animation—strange, tender and sharply political.
Alberto Vázquez is a Galician comic-book artist, illustrator, writer and filmmaker whose work moves between adult animation, black comedy, horror and political satire. He has received three Goya Awards for his animated films.
His best-known works include Birdboy: The Forgotten Children, adapted from his own graphic novel Psiconautas, and Unicorn Wars. He also directed the award-winning short film Decorado, which he later expanded into a feature.
Across comics and cinema, Vázquez creates vivid, unsettling worlds populated by damaged characters, oppressive systems and fragile dreams of escape.
