In the violent streets of Mexico City, Joel leads a double life fixing car engines by day and getting his hands dirty by night. Now, he must repair the toughest machine of all: his own shattered existence.

Based on real events in Mexico City 1994, Joel, a car mechanic, fixes other people's machines but never his own. Immersed in the denial of death, the fragmented memories of a tormented soul reveal a reflection on life, loss, and redemption.

Animation: Esteban Azuela, Belmont, Carlos Davila
Scenario, script: Esteban Azuela
Set: Photogrammetry by: Volumetrica, Esteban Azuela, Belmont, Carlos Davila, Raúl Topete, Osvaldo Ramirez, Salvador Trujillo
Castings: Juan Carlos Medellin, Fernando Bonilla
Image: Esteban Azuela,
Special effects: Belmont
Film editor: Pedro G. García
Rendering: Line2
Sound engineer: José Miguel Enríquez 
Sound editor: José Miguel Enríquez, Félix Cobos
Mix: José Miguel Enríquez
Soundtrack: María Bonita, Héctor Ruiz
Postproduction management: Mariana Paredes

Esteban Azuela (MX). From hand drawing to complex transmedia pieces, Esteban Azuela experiments with the narrative possibilities of visual art, in an atypical space between fiction, documentary, and dialogue with other disciplines. His videos and animated shorts have been exhibited in venues as diverse as the Palais de Tokio, Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage, and the Central de Abastos market, while his collaborations as a VJ and sound act visualist include equally diverse artists such as Richard Devine, Los Viejos, Black Devil Disco Club, Tristan Arp, Nick Zinner, and Lourdes Grobet.

Aferrado tells a story of the violent streets of Mexico City, where Joel leads a double life: fixing car engines by day, getting his hands dirty by night. By the end of the film, we witness him repairing the toughest machine of all: his own shattered existence. Esteban Azuela builds a narrative through emotion and glitches that is simultaneously compelling and perplexing, evoking a constant sense of wonder. 
Azuela’s use of pixels as a material is a refreshing push to the craft of animation. Amid an age of software and graphics cards that render reality with fidelity that exceeds the capabilities of the human eye, his glitch becomes an art form. It functions as a sculptural assembly of pixels, exhibiting a diverse range of techniques to refine animation-based cinema.
The intimacy, cultural codes, and conflictions across Joel’s life are also on full display. We witness him grapple with his ethics, reconsider his motivations, and choose the tenderness of family at an existential expense. We are placed inside of his mind—sometimes disorientingly so. Aferrado is a tale told through the synergy of written narration and visual movement, a novel cinematic study.