EXCLUSIVE: New Yorker Studios will release the Eddie Alcazar and Darren Aronofsky short film The Vandal on Dec. 13 across The New Yorker’s digital platforms as part of its “Screening Room” series.
Eddie Alcazar and Bill Duke Courtesy For The Vandal—set in a world not unlike mid-20th century America—Alcazar dives into the mind of a man named Harold (Bill Duke) who undergoes a lobotomy and is suffering from traumatic memory loss as a result. As his memories continue to fade and his search for peace is interrupted, the character becomes desperate.
Baadja-Lyne Odums, Harry Goaz, Maurice Compte, Thomas Hildreth, and Abbey Lee costarred.
“Very happy to finally show the world what we have created with The Vandal and our state-of-the-art Metascope technique,” Alcazar told Deadline exclusively in a statement. “Working with The New Yorker will give the film a strong platform so that many people across the world will be able to experience its universal feelings and themes. I’m excited to continue our relationship and continue to grow the feature with our incredibly talented team.”
Alcazar spoke to Deadline ahead of their collaboration’s Cannes debut in July about the Metascope technique he created combining stop motion animation and live-action sequences he used in The Vandal.
“The whole process took like a year and a half to make a short which is longer than what my feature took,” he said. “Stop motion is very labor intensive so there’s no real efficient way to do it. Watching these animators making the same repetitive moves for 12 hours a day was totally against the grain of my process. I usually like using my instincts and just being motivated by that but with this, I really had to choose my direction carefully. If I decided on another take, that would be a week lost and a loss of money. I was working with a really crazy timeline for production. I think the short serves as a piece by itself but also as a prototype for this technique we’ve created using stop motion and live-action.”
Alcazar served as writer and director of The Vandal. Aronofsky, Scott Franklin, Sandy Haddad, Ted Robbins, and Matthew Krul executive produced. Javier Lovato and Thomas Hildreth produced. Kris Bowers scored.
A trailer for the short can be watched below.
