Gizmodo Launches The Online Premiere of Visually Stunning SHIMMER

An animated short film pushing the boundaries of craft and technique.

The visually stunning animated short film SHIMMER (also known as Fulgores), winner of Mexico’s 2025 Ariel Award for Best Animated Short Film, the country’s most prestigious film honor has officially entered the awards-season conversation with its “For Your Consideration” campaign in the Best Animated Short Film category. 

Written, directed, and produced by Andrés Palma, Shimmer marks his directorial debut, a retro-futuristic-inspired reflection on fatherhood and regret.

The short’s studio ESCENA has joined forces with media partner Gizmodo to make the full film available to the public exclusively on io9, Gizmodo’s entertainment vertical platform.

“Every project that matters to me comes from a place of unresolved emotion,” says Palma. “Art is how I process pain and transform it into something meaningful. I trust the audience will resonate with that.”

Set along a haunting shoreline strewn with the remains of forgotten shipwrecks, the film follows Ricardo, a devoted father consumed by his obsession to complete a towering lighthouse he believes will bring salvation. In his pursuit, he becomes blind to the growing resentment he has fostered in his eldest daughter Lucía, whose own choices will force him to confront the devastating cost of his dreams.

“Shimmer is a film about a father and a daughter with too much hubris and too little grace for one another entrenched in a struggle that will tear them apart,” says writer-director Andrés Palma. “It’s about repentance that comes too late, and the heartbreaking realization that neglect can sever even the strongest of bonds: the one between parent and child.”

Es personal y universal.

The film emerged from a deeply personal chapter in Palma’s life. “I was going through the breakup of a decade-long relationship that ended because of my reluctance to start a family,” he recalls. “My protagonist Ricardo’s struggle came from my fears about fatherhood,” he shares, “while his daughter Lucía’s defiance came from my guilt as a son to a father suffering from dementia. SHIMMER became an exorcism and ultimately, a reconciliation with the possibility of my own fatherhood. It’s not a coincidence that my first son was conceived right as we were wrapping up production on the short”, he explains.

Production team

Made possible thanks to the financial support of executive producers, the celebrated Mexican animator Jorge R. Gutiérrez (The Book of Life, Maya and the Three), and producer Andrés Buzo, Shimmer was developed through a groundbreaking collaboration between professionals and students at the Mexico City-based Escena Animation Studio, the spearhead of Escena Animation School’s project-based learning efforts. Joining the team there’s also associate producer Karla Vazquez, co-writer Santiago Maza Stern and composer Alex Otaola.

“We wanted to show that world-class, ambitious animation can emerge from Mexico,” notes producer Andrés Buzo. “Our team made up largely of apprentices and first-time artists- pushed creative and technical boundaries few thought possible.”

Fully realized in 3D animation using Unreal Engine 5, the film integrates handcrafted artistry with cutting-edge visual design. The ethereal “shimmering” fish that drift across the night sky were created using the Niagara particle system, merging procedural motion with hand-crafted animation cycles to achieve a visual language that feels both organic and transcendent.

More about the work of Andrés Palma and the ESCENA Animation Studio:

Andrés Palma was originally trained as a classical artist, he has been working in the Mexican film, animation and visual effects industries for nearly two decades, from independent film productions down to advertising work for large established agencies.

He has worked as a VFX supervisor, producer, and director and he was a strategic partner with Technicolor for the first branch of MPC in Latin America. In 2018 he took over the direction of Escena Animation Studio where he remains to this day.

Official Website | Film’s IG | Director’s Website | Director’s IG | Studio’s IG

*Special thanks to ChicArt.World PR for all information and images. Find them at ChicArt. Public Relations.