Roberto Catani is a multi-award-winning creator of animated short films, who trained at one of Italy’s most vibrant creative hubs, the Scuola del Libro in Urbino. As a teenager attending his first animation festivals, he was deeply moved by the poetic styles of artists such as Jurij Norstein and Emanuele Luzzati, and immediately decided that animation would become his realm. He is not a prolific filmmaker, as he makes his films in the spare time between teaching and illustration work. Patient, resilient, and solitary, he allows themes and emotions to settle over a long period before bringing them to life in drawn animation. These themes and feelings mature with time, largely stemming from personal memories—childhood recollections eager to be revisited and relived through animation—where sweetness mingles with a sharp, lingering melancholy permeating each of his films.
Although his introspective filmic world is instantly recognizable, Catani’s style has evolved over the years “without compromises or nostalgia for what once was” (Roberto Catani), influenced by changing intellectual interests, personal tastes, and artistic influences. His animation has such an inherent, distinct quality—fluid, almost seamless—that it feels like an endless long take, demanding the kind of attentive participation akin to reading poetry. Perhaps the most defining trait of his work is a rarefied light—one might even call it the true protagonist of his drawings—a light that appears to bear an unmistakably Umbrian-Marche identity, reminiscent of the raking light in Piero della Francesca’s works, lending figures volume and an illusion of life.
In today’s world of auteur-animated shorts—often flattened and homogenized by the rampant use of ever more sophisticated but sterile 2D and 3D software—Roberto Catani’s films highlight the urgent need to return to tradition: manual techniques, the ritual of getting one’s hands dirty, making room for mistakes and human unpredictability.
With his debut film Il pesce rosso (The Goldfish, 1995), Catani already announced a strong authorial signature, featuring a handcrafted, tactile, and poetic style. It is the only one of his films to include a narrator’s voice—reciting a poem born from the author’s dream. Three years later came La sagra (The Festival, 1998), which, in a swirl of colors and accordion melodies, evokes a Felliniesque return to his roots through a flying letter, a passing train, and folk dances. The soft technique of pastel and chalk on black paper, along with its warm palette (ochre, yellow, brown), would give way to vibrant primary colors (red, blue) in La funambola (The Tightrope Walker, 2002). This film, his most internationally awarded, portrays a woman’s continual quest for balance—teetering between joys and sorrows, love and regret, anticipation and dreams. The score by Canadian composer Normand Roger subtly infuses the visuals and animation with added meaning. After a ten-year hiatus exploring new formal and technical experiments, Catani released La testa tra le nuvole (Absent Minded, 2013). Here, the drawing is more realistic, achieved through a mixed-media approach (large oil pastels, chalk, charcoal, colored pencils, and drypoint on white paper), and the story emerges from a “deep source of personal memory and emotion.” We enter the dreamlike world of a schoolboy who daydreams during class, only to be jarred back to reality by the imposing figure of his teacher. Andrea Martignoni’s meticulous sound design (breaths, sounds, and noises) further underscores the child’s parallel realms—the real and the imaginary—shaping the narrative.
If, in this masterpiece, the child escapes the conformity and boredom of the educational system, the two protagonists in Per tutta la vita (For All Life Long, 2018)—a woman and a man—escape into memory, recalling the most meaningful moments of their love story, once again accompanied by Andrea Martignoni’s music and sound. In his latest work, Il burattino e la balena (The Puppet and the Whale, 2024), loosely inspired by Carlo Collodi’s story, Catani deepens the theme broached in La testa tra le nuvole. This time, the protagonist is a Pinocchio who refuses to conform to the dominant social and political model, merely by declining to become a boy at all. Created using the same mixed-media technique as a decade earlier—though with backgrounds even more oil-rich and textured, and a softer line—this film presents a fluid, evocative style of animation. Il burattino e la balena reveals the author’s underlying melancholy for “a future he decides not to embrace.”
Andrijana Ružić
Italy • 1’ • 1995 • Roberto Catani
Synopsis:
How many things that seem so ordinary can appear unbelievable in a child’s eyes... like a goldfish, for example.
Roberto Catani’s first film, Il pesce rosso, is short yet experimental, already displaying a strong stylistic identity—inheriting, in its own way, the poetic influence of Jurij Norstein and Lele Luzzati. The lightness of the drawings and the “vibration” of the animation make this little gem feel more like an animated poem than a short film, aided by the voiceover from composer David Monacchi.
Italy • 2’40” • 1998 • Roberto Catani
Synopsis:
The lively, family-like atmosphere of a local festival is interrupted by sudden moments of melancholy.
La sagra may appear to be Roberto Catani’s most carefree short film, and both its title and the animation’s tone might confirm that notion. However, a perceptive eye will still detect the trademark melancholy that characterizes the artist from Jesi. In fact, amidst the whirlwind of colors and sounds, the festival’s frenetic rhythm is cleverly slowed down to depict those abrupt feelings of loneliness we might have all experienced during festive gatherings.
Italy • 6’ • 2002 • Roberto Catani, Arte France
Synopsis:
Letters bursting with words, yet voiceless, narrate a young woman’s life—her falling in love, her wedding, and her motherhood, seen as a dreamlike refuge. The images flow behind her closed eyes as she stands still, facing the sea, feeling the need for a newfound lightness.
Only an artist like Roberto Catani could so gracefully depict—or “animate”—the female condition. While the dreamlike, delicate ambiance typical of his earlier works (almost reminiscent of Chagall’s paintings) persists in La funambola, it is from this very masterpiece onward that the Marche-based filmmaker firmly establishes the cornerstones of his distinctive narrative style. The tightrope walker’s search for balance, Normand Roger’s custom-composed score, and the myriad visual hints within the film all retain their evocative potency more than twenty years after its release.
Italy • 7’50” • 2013 • Roberto Catani
Synopsis:
A child’s daydream in a classroom is abruptly interrupted by his teacher. The “educator” threatens to cut off the boy’s ear to “stimulate” his concentration and prevent further escapes into imagination.
Beginning with La testa tra le nuvole, Roberto Catani begins a critical exploration of authority, which he later revisits and expands in Il burattino e la balena. Despite its autobiographical undertones, the emotions evoked by this short differ markedly from those in his earlier works: the disoriented, uncertain drawings, joined with Andrea Martignoni’s careful use of breaths, noises, and sound, create a tense, unsettling atmosphere that builds to an inevitable crescendo. Even in depicting the brief story of a “simple” child, Catani manages to convey an oppressive sense of anxiety, reminding us just how remote the realm of animation can be from the world of childhood.
Italy, France • 5’20” • 2018 • Withstand Film (Davide Ferazza, Alessandro Giorgio), MIYU Productions (Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron)
Synopsis:
A delicate flashback of a love story, where the protagonists’ telling silence brings forth memories of a genuine yet concluded relationship. Nonetheless, when something ends, it need not be tragic.
After the pleasantly disquieting atmosphere of La testa tra le nuvole, Catani’s poetic vision returns with a renewed emotional awareness. The universal nature of love, as represented in his drawings, yields the stage to the true stars of the short: emotions, which must be experienced in all their facets, including the more difficult ones. Although the relationship in Per tutta la vita has effectively ended, it avoids any form of violence—literal or figurative. It is simply depicted as an emotional event essential for personal growth, retaining its beauty even in its closure.
France, Italy • 8’ • 2024 • MIYU Productions (Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron), Withstand Film (Davide Ferazza, Alessandro Giorgio)
Synopsis:
In a carpenter’s shop, a puppet comes to life and begins to explore the surrounding world. Before long, however, he encounters a society that glorifies conformity, where the ominous presence of a whale rules. Perhaps the puppet prefers to remain made of wood...
Every culture has characters symbolic of disobedience, yet few are as iconic as Pinocchio. Among the many versions of Pinocchio on screen, Roberto Catani’s stands out for its unyielding sense of rebellion. For the second time since La testa tra le nuvole, the Jesi-born director sets aside his proven emotional sensitivity to deliver an original critique of authority—this time directed at the established social order—through drawings notable for their material, alienating quality. Presented at the 81st Venice Film Festival, Il burattino e la balena reaffirms Catani’s thematic and stylistic versatility, leaving us eager to see where his creativity will lead next.
Talk Roberto Catani (interview on Animaphix)
“Per tutta la vita”, the new film by Roberto Catani (interview on Artribune)
Roberto Catani, the poet of animated drawing (interview on Centropagina)
Interview to Roberto Catani (on Marche Film Commission)
"Il burattino e la balena", a hymn to disobedience, thinking of Totò (interview on Cinecittanews)
