Jordi Sánchez-Navarro, researcher and professor of information and communication sciences at the UOC, is also director of the Anima’t section of the Sitges Festival, author of the book Tangible imagination. An essential history of animation cinema (UOC, 2020) and, needless to say, a great expert in animated film. That is why it is valuable that on October 15th, upon leaving the screening of Wildwood in Sitges and still overwhelmed, he affirmed that it was “surely” “the best animation film stop-motion of history”. And once seen, it is difficult to contradict Sánchez Navarro.

Before Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, plenty of creatures orbited above human heads. During the 1950s, the Soviets and Americans took their rivalry beyond our planet, starting a space race that would immortalize names like Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, Aleksei Leonov, Buzz Aldrin, and Valentina Tereshkova. But before them, there were Laika, Baker, Belka, Ham, and Strelka. The first animals in space, but not the first to fly, since in 1783 the Montgolfier brothers had placed a sheep, a duck, and a rooster inside a hot-air balloon to see what would happen if they flew.