Tito is a shy 10-year-old boy who lives with his mother. Suddenly, an unusual epidemic starts to spread, making people sick whenever they get scared. Tito quickly discovers that the cure is somehow related to his missing father’s research on bird song.
He embarks on a journey to save the world from the epidemic with his friends. Tito’s search for the antidote becomes a quest for his missing father and for his own identity.
"My home city, São Paulo, is known as the “city of walls”. Twenty million people live here, most of whom are hiding behind fences, barbed and electric wires – it is as if fear has become an epidemic, a disease. Perhaps because of this, the idea that fear is contagious has always fascinated me. And imagined violence – which may be based on facts, but is greatly amplified by the media – contributes as much to this epidemic as real violence. [...]
The dream of reaching a truly democratic society is going down the drain not because of real dangers, which can be fought, but because of imagined ones. I thought there were not many people making movies about this epidemic, especially for children. And I think that it might fall upon children to find a way out of this mess that we created for them. I hope they do!"
- Gustavo Steinberg
"We wanted to make the whole movie using oil-paint, but this turned out not to be a viable production model. “Tito and the Birds”’s graphical vein is the result of the interplay between a relentless search for the best possible way to convey gesture and express what we wanted to express, and the need to adapt our wishes to the resources we had. So, for example, we photographed some oil-paint brushstrokes, which were then used by the digital painting staff. Later, during composition, additional paint textures and strokes were inserted in order to enhance light ambiance, shadows and other interactions, as well as animation of effects such as smoke, fire etc."
- Gabriel Bitar