Inside a cafe while smoking a whole pack of cigarettes, a man poses an ambitious question: “What is Love?”. A collection of vignettes and situations will lead the man to the desired conclusion.

While this year’s Oscars had us talking about everything but movies, the real slap in the face was the stripped air-time for certain categories. The short film categories, film editing, makeup/hairstyle, original score, production design and sound deserved better than the cut-down edit that they got. One of these winners was Alberto Mielgo for Best Animated Short Film ‘The Windshield Wiper’. Luckily enough the film is available freely online so we are delighted to have it highlighted on Film Shortage!

‘The Windshield Wiper’ is a collection of vignettes and situations stemmed from a man’s ambitious question: “What is Love?”. While you are firstly hooked with its impressive visual style, the thought-provoking narrative certainly does the rest of the work to keep you engaged (and win you an Oscar). If you recognize the style, it’s only because animator Alberto Mielgo was hired as production designer on “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse“, where his short film surprisingly inspired certain visual elements of the “Spider-Verse”, as he started working on the short before the Sony film. Alberto also wrote, designed and directed “The Witness“, an animated film part of the acclaimed Netflix Anthology series: Love Death and Robots.

Watch the fantastic talk between Barry Jenkins and Alberto Mielgo about ‘The Windshield Wiper’.