Flora's Room and S'Ammutadori in 2022: updates

Recently I was thinking about the short film “S’Ammutadori” by Sardinian studio Flora’s Room (here the in-depth article from last year), and with curiosity I decided to check if there were any news regarding public distribution of the complete work. To this day, “S’Ammutadori” is not accessible online in its entirety, but there is still other good news.

The project for the film “The World of Las”, an animated feature inspired by the novel “L’ultimo amore di Las”, was selected to participate in the 2021 edition of Cartoon Springboard, the pitching event for projects by young talents from animation schools of all Europe. We briefly talked about this event in the context of Cartoon Digital that took place in Cagliari in May 2021. Cartoon Springboard 2021 took place in the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia from 26 to 28 of October, and 39 young talents presented 24 projects, with a wide variety of themes and categories of audience to aim at. “The World of Las” is not the only Italian project:

• Fishing Stars, a film presented by Giona Dapporto, tells the story of a time in which the stars are in the water and reflect into the sky. Jane, Mike, Rambo and Paul have the mission of saving them from the greedy hunters that want to take them. 
• Astrid and the School of Astronauts, by Federica Carbone and Anita Verona, is a series of 52 episodes of 7 minutes each starring the albino 7 year old kid Astrid, a space enthusiast who wants to be an astronaut. With her friends she lives adventures among planets and solar systems learning the rules of the universe.
• Chakra Warriors, by Claudia Giancola, Alen Timofeyev, Marco Auddino and Sushant Sudhakaran, is a series of 30 episodes of 22 minutes each aimed at an audience between 15 and 24 years old. In a world where seven kingdoms do not receive water and power equally from the river Satyadham, the protagonist Shakti investigates on the water pollution but they cause a mortal accident for their sister. Feeling guilty, Shakti can only hope in an ancient legend: a wish will be granted to the seven “Chakra Warriors”, people who obtained supernatural abilities after opening their chakras. 

Thanks to the official pictures of the event we can take an exclusive peek at the presentation of The World of Las and an example of concept art for the film. 

Francesca Floris and Fabrizio di Palma present "The World of Las" at Cartoon Springboard
(photo by © Carlos Sevilla Martinez, 2021)

Flora’s Room studio adventures don’t end here, instead they reached America! A few months ago, in February, co-founders Francesca Floris and Fabrizio di Palma presented the studio to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. They talked about Sardinia, its culture and traditions represented through the media of animation. They elaborated on the fight to reach inclusivity, equality and a better representation of lesser known or misrepresented communities, and how animation can be a learning and development tool for children. Furthermore, during their stay Flora’s Room representatives could talk with the Native American community of the Navajo, in Utah, and ponder on the similarities and differences between their history and Sardinian history.

S'Ammutadori in Los Angeles
(source: Flora's Room facebook)

The two co-founders did not travel alone: on the studio’s facebook page can be seen some charming pictures of S’Ammutadori in different American landscapes visited by them. Despite being a nightmarish character, this creature is also the lovely mascot of the studio and seeing it in mundane situations is always funny.

One thing is for sure, we will attentively follow the path of these promising productions!