AZKENA

Short Talk with Ane Inés Landeta (director) and Lorea Lyons (director)

BEST SHORT ANIMATION FILM Category

22nd IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival 2025

Spain, Animation, 00:09:07, 2024

Synopsis: Lorea's reference points are her mother and her grandmother. Through these two generations she observes the bond that women have experienced around motherhood. Now it is up to her to decide whether or not to become a mother herself and to look for answers to pending questions.

Biography: Lorea Lyons - She graduated in Audiovisual Communication in 2018. Since then she has worked mainly in cultural management and production. She has also participated in short films such as Petite Con (2017) and Instrucciones para caminar por la ciudad (2021).

Ane Inés Landeta - She graduated in Fine Arts in 2018.  In addition to production and photography work, she has participated as an animator in the production of several short films with the HauAzkena Animation Group.

Ane Inés Landeta & Lorea Lyons, directors

Toma Manov: Are the photos we see in the film real family photographs? And how did you decide to blend these images, these traces of time, with animation?

Ane Inés Landeta: Yes, those are real photographs, both from our families. Since we wanted to talk about motherhood, and we were speaking with our grandmothers, our mothers, and reflecting on our own perspectives, it felt natural to use our own family photos. We combined them with animation techniques like collage and cut-out animation, which we felt worked really well for the themes—especially the decision to become a mother, or not.

Lorea Lyons: We had a lot of photographs, and both our families are from the same region, so the style of the photos was very similar. We thought animation would be the perfect medium to use them and to tell this story. Then we looked for visual techniques that would blend naturally with the photographs.

Toma Manov: That must have been a very emotional journey, looking through those images from both your families. I felt the film is not only a reflection on motherhood, but also on family legacy, and how a woman can be defined, or rather, how she shouldn’t be defined only by motherhood. Is that a fair interpretation?

Lyons: Yes, that’s exactly it. The protagonist is thinking about her grandmother and mother, and their relationship to motherhood, and she’s reflecting on how that relates to her own life. Maybe she won’t become a mother, but she’s thinking about it deeply not just following what society tells her to do. It’s a space for reflection.

Toma Manov: Since the photos are so personal, I wanted to ask: is one of you narrating the film? Or did you bring in a voice actor?

Landeta: We worked with an actress.

Toma Manov: And how did you decide to include something so personal, your own family photos, but have someone else narrate it?

Lyons: If one of us had done the voiceover, we’d probably be overthinking it, saying things like “this part doesn’t sound right” or “I don’t like how I sound.” So we decided to use a third person, someone who wasn’t connected to the story, so we could stay focused on the animation and the overall short film, not be distracted by our own voices.

  
Interviewer: Toma Manov

Editor: Martin Kudlac