There is light and beauty, even in the darkest of worlds.

Winner of Spain's Goya Award for Best Animated Feature (where the director separately won Best Animated Short Film in the same year), Alberto Vázquez's debut feature is a darkly comic, mind-bending fantasy based on his own graphic novel and award-winning short film. Birdboy: The Forgotten Children is a darkly comic, beautiful and haunting tale of coming of age in a world gone to ruin, rich with wholly striking, graphic imagery that brings to life a discordant world populated by adorable (and adorably disturbed) animated critters searching for hope and love - amid the ruin.

Stranded on an island in a post-apocalyptic world, teenager Dinky and her friends hatch a dangerous plan to escape in the hope of finding a better life. Meanwhile, her old friend Birdboy has shut himself off from the world, pursued by the police and haunted by demon tormentors. But unbeknownst to anyone, he contains a secret inside him that could change the world forever.

"This is a beautiful film, and an ugly one, and the tension between those two sides doesn't abate until the very last scene." (Indiewire)

"Given how rigid and formulaic most mainstream animation is, there's something liberating about watching a traditionally hand-drawn cartoon thumb its nose so gleefully at traditional G-rated storytelling." (NPR)

Saturday, February 17
Doors 12:45 pm | Movie 1:15 pm

Tickets $10 advance | $12 at the door

*Minors welcome in the balcony! Must be 19 + w/ID for bar service and main floor seating.
**Rio Theatre Groupons and passes OK! Please redeem at the door.

BIRDBOY: THE FORGOTTEN CHILDREN (Alberto Vázquez & Pedro Rivero, 2017 / 75 mins / PG / Spanish with English subs) Birdboy and his animal friends plan their escape from an ecologically devastated island in this surreal, animated fantasy.