THE LAURO
by Giovanna Lopalco
THE LAURO
by Giovanna Lopalco
synopsis
synopsis
Aldara goes to spend the summer at her aunts’ house. Between games with her friends Amanda and Breixo, and the vigilance of her aunts Olga and Inés, Aldara spends her time looking for her favourite fetish: sanitary towels.
One night, the Laúro appears in her room, a half animal-half human character who will try to seduce her and with whom she will have more encounters until the end of her journey.
technical information
technical information
Title: O Laúro
Internacional title: The Lauro
Genre: Drama, Fantastic
Duration: 12 min. (estimated)
Color: color
Format: Animation 2D
Exhibition format: DCP
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Sound: Dolby 5.1
Nationality: Spain
Original Language: Galician
Production: Acariño Films
Year of production: 2025
crew and cast
crew and cast
Direction and art direction: Giovanna Lopalco
Screenplay: Giovanna Lopalco, Pablo Silva
Executive producer: Andrés Sanjurjo
Support: AGADIC · Xunta de Galicia
labs
labs
LAB – Festival Intersección · 2024
teaser
teaser
director's notes
director's notes
O Laúro is a short film about the discovery of sexuality in childhood. A discovery that that will be at times comical, sweet and bitter.
This journey is traversed by Aldara’s childish gaze, as yet uncorrupted by the judgement and stereotypes of the adults.
The story takes place in a summer in a rural area where Aldara’s aunts live. Every year the protagonist rediscovers this place far from her mother. It is a colourful, warm landscape, at times dull, which symbolically represents that vital moment of childhood.
To a certain extent, it is as if childhood in the Laúro is more than a time, it is a place.
A place to return to and find oneself again. The landscape itself, its natural changes, re- flect the feelings of the storie.
The narrative is divided into day and night: The day is the time time of play, of friends, of being conscious.
Night is desire, the mysterious, the dreamlike.It is the time of the Laúro, a character who, in the short film who is half animal-half human, who becomes the nocturnal guide of the the protago- nist’s, her secret friend.
Like the Major Arcana ‘The Devil’, in the Tarot de Marseille, the Laúro refers to our sub-consciousness, to our shadow, what we are most ashamed of. This mixture of human and animal also reinforces the ambiguity of the character, is he good? is he bad?
Aldara doesn’t know, and she doesn’t even think about it, she simply spends a time with him that allows her to exploit and spend this summer without her parents in which Alda- ra discovers her sexuality. Aldara discovers sexuality, although we don’t see it, we intuit it.
The structure is constructed by opposites, highlights the dichotomy experienced by the prota: her childhood innocence versus her desire to become an adult. A confrontation
that is painful only if we look at it through the eyes of an adult and with the guilt that guilt that invites us to make something anecdotal, a secret to carry for the rest of our lives.
This is how I imagine ‘O Laúro’, a sum- mertale, light, dreamlike,poetic, with a subtly bitter side and sinister side, just as it is to as it is to acquire the gaze of an adult.
