In ‘The Scarlet Tamagochi’ A Missing Virtual Pet Kicks Off A Schoolyard Noir Mystery (EXCLUSIVE TRAILER)

Fresh off winning the top prize at Chilemonos and securing Oscar qualification, Chilean animated short The Scarlet Tamagochi (El Tamagochi Escarlata) has unveiled its first trailer exclusively with Cartoon Brew.

The noir-inspired short – directed by Francisco Visceral, written by Chilean comedian Ignacio Socías, and produced by Socías and Lucas Engel – transforms the everyday politics of a 1990s Chilean schoolyard into an absurd detective story, filtered through hand-painted animation, cutout techniques, stop-motion, and a deliberately chaotic aesthetic.

That visual style wasn’t born from a desire to stand out as much as necessity.

“We had almost no budget,” Visceral told Cartoon Brew in a recent conversation. “Every creative decision came from what I like to call the art of economy. Instead of wishing for more resources, we worked with exactly what we had.”

The filmmakers built the film around three guiding principles: making everything feel as though it had been painted by a child recounting a school day, channeling the anything-goes spirit of 1990s MTV animation, and creating something unmistakably Chilean.

That philosophy also dictated the production process, led by Pista B and Dantesco Media. Visceral and fellow animator Matías “Matata” worked through the film’s six-month production largely on their own, constantly adapting techniques as each scene required.

“Some sequences are painted frame by frame,” Visceral explained. “But whenever something became too difficult or time-consuming, we’d switch to cutout animation. Sometimes I literally looked around my desk, grabbed whatever materials were nearby, and animated those. We were responding instinctively the entire time.”

The resulting collage of painted backgrounds, paper cutouts, and stop-motion improv gives The Scarlet Tamagochi a tactile quality entirely its own. Rather than hiding those seams, the filmmakers embraced them.

“We wanted to be honest with the materials,” Visceral said. “Sometimes a scene was simply funnier if we made it in stop-motion instead of painting every frame. That honesty became part of the film’s identity.”

While the visuals evoke underground animation, Socías’ screenplay draws from his own childhood memories and classic, structured film noir in equal parts.

“I’m a comedian, not a professional screenwriter,” Socías said. “Everything comes from lived experience. When you’re a kid, helping the girl you like or solving some tiny problem at school feels like life or death. We wanted to take those little childhood problems and blow them up into a full detective story.”

Film noir also proved to be a surprisingly practical storytelling framework.

“The genre almost speaks its own language, because it has so many recognizable tropes,” Socías said. “There’s the femme fatale, the false suspect, the investigation. We just translated all of that into elementary school.”

Key influences came from The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, and Blade Runner. Visceral says the latter directly inspired several sequences, including the rooftop climax, while even the film’s music briefly shifts toward Vangelis-inspired synthesizers to underscore the reference.

The filmmakers also rejected the idea of hiring professional voice actors for the short, even if the budget had allowed it. Instead, nearly every role is performed by friends and collaborators from their own artistic circle.

“We didn’t want voices that could come from anywhere,” Visceral said. “We wanted voices from here. The cast is made up of our friends: animators, artists, actors. The music was written by my brother, with whom I also play in a doom metal band. It’s a very collaborative, very family project.”

That sense of personal ownership extends throughout the production, giving the film an authenticity that mirrors its handmade visuals.

Following its Chilemonos victory, The Scarlet Tamagochi is beginning its Oscar campaign while also preparing an unusual theatrical experiment in Chile later this year, where it will screen commercially alongside two other animated shorts. It’s a rare attempt to bring a package of independent animated shorts into Chilean cinemas, where distribution can be difficult for any domestic production, let alone a low-budget indie animated short.

That said, the few domestic breakouts Chile does score are often the most authentic and handmade stories rather than those that try to be something else. If that trend holds true, locals will surely be thrilled with what they find in The Scarlet Tamagochi.