Mutafukaz

If you take one part Grand Theft Auto and one part Swedish cult cartoon Rocky and throw in a dash of 90s classic Men in Black for good measure, you might get something similar to animated feature Mutafukaz.

Pals Angelino and Vinz live in the roughest neighbourhood of dystopian Dark Meat City, amongst gang members and prostitutes. Angelino just got the sack from his job as a pizza delivery boy after having crashed and totalled the pizza scooter. Hungry, unemployed, and with no money for food, surrounded by roaches and old pizza boxes in their crummy flat, they are hardly thrilled about how life has turned out. Little do they know, things are about to get even worse!

Angelino begins to hallucinate about tentacle monsters, and about a mother carrying her child, being chased by some seriously creepy men in dark suits – who are being led by an even creepier man in a flashy white suit, carrying a golden pistol. At the same time, a full gang war breaks loose in Dark Meat City, and the world as Angelino and Vinze know it is in peril.

French/Japanese Mutafukaz is a punch-in-the-face kind of film, with stylized violence, Shakespeare-quoting gangsters, and insane action sequences – all of which is sometimes interrupted by words like «What the hell is going on!?» flashing in bold letters across the screen.

«If you see just one dystopian hip hop sci-fi animated feature this year… Mutafukaz is fast-paced, very gory, flowing with juvenile humour and a total riot» – BFI

Shojiro Nishimi is an award-wimming Japanese filmmaker and animator, who has long worked for the company Studio 4°C. Mutafukaz is his first feature film as a director. Guillaume Renard is a French animator, writer and creator, also known under his artist name Run. He directed a short film based on the Mutafukaz universe in 2003 which has later developed into a series of graphic novels and now a feature film.