‘Olivia And The Invisible Earthquake’ review: Empathetic Spanish stop-motion captures life on the poverty line

Dir: Irene Iborra Rizo. Spain/France/Belgium/Chile/Switzerland. 2025. 71mins

Twelve-year-old Olivia (Celia Sol), her struggling actress mom Ingrid (Silvia Vilarrasa) and her seven-year-old brother Tim (Hug Mont) don’t have a lot. They do, nevertheless, share a wealth of creativeness that softens the onerous edges of poverty. However when the household is evicted from their residence, Ingrid sinks into despair and it’s as much as Olivia to guard her little brother from the awful reality of their state of affairs. She convinces him that every thing they’re experiencing is a part of a movie shoot, and he’s its star. It’s a tough steadiness to sort out weighty topics resembling psychological well being and housing insecurity whereas additionally creating a piece that’s empathetic, joyful and child-friendly. But Irene Iborra Rizo’s attractive Barcelona-set stop-motion animation achieves all of this, and extra. 

Captures vividly the spirit and power of the Barcelona streets

Olivia And The Invisible Earthquake is the primary feature-length movie from Iborra Rizo, who beforehand co-directed shorts together with 2013’s Click on. It’s also the primary stop-motion function to be produced in Catalonia – though, Iborra Rizo did have a area people of collaborators to attract on having run a masters programme in stop-motion methods for a decade. Olivia… is tailored from a graphic novel by Maite Carranza and handles its subject material evenly, taking a visually ingenious strategy to Olivia’s internalised fears and stresses. It’s a delight of a movie that takes a well timed stance in favour of community-led collective motion. Additional pageant slots are doubtless and the image may very well be distinctive sufficient to tempt distributors searching for household movies that sort out substantial social points. 

The astute steadiness struck by the movie is especially evident within the character design. It might have been straightforward to make the youngsters overly cute and sentimentalised, however the characters, whereas stylised, have distinct personalities and really feel like authentically city kids. Iborra Rizo makes use of wool for hair and leans into the pleasingly textural qualities of the clothes materials, making perceptive costume selections. Olivia, evicted from her residence and former faculty in a extra prosperous a part of city, wears studious nerd glasses; a extra streetwise look is favoured by her new neighbours within the gritty, down-at-heel quarter the place the household is compelled to squat in an empty house. 

It isn’t simply the characters who’re dressed to perfection. Iborra Rizo additionally captures vividly the spirit and power of the Barcelona streets, meticulously recreating the graffiti, the aromatic, spiced color palette and the standard of the sunshine. Sound design is equally essential, with the brand new neighbourhood a tumultuous, buffeting collision of voices and music, the sound of lives lived on high of one another.

At first, it’s all a little bit overwhelming for Olivia and Tim. However as soon as they’re welcomed by a neighbour bearing an enormous pot of hen and beans, they begin to embrace the heat and power of the streets round their sparsely furnished new residence. Their mom, then again, sinks into herself, her color fading and her power sapping, her as soon as inexhaustible provide of tales and make-believe now silent. To make issues worse, a social employee is circling, warning that Olivia and her brother can be positioned into care if their dwelling circumstances don’t enhance. 

All of it takes its toll on Olivia, who begins to expertise psychological ‘earthquakes’: hallucinations by which the bottom splits and he or she imagines herself plummeting into the stomach of the earth the place ultimately she finds a sort of peace. It’s a brilliantly evocative illustration of tension, and the impulse to isolate your self at moments of stress. However in the end, Olivia realises power and survival come not from shutting herself away, however from reaching out and discovering an entire neighborhood that is able to catch her if she falls.