In the fall of 2024, I had the privilege of attending Chilemonos<\/a>, the inaugural Vancouver edition of the long-running Chilean animation festival dedicated to fostering connections between Latin American and Canadian animation cultures. The festival\u2019s culminating event was the round table \u201cOur Voices\u201d held at University of British Columbia\u2019s Robson Square campus. The diverse program differed in technique and production context. In this post, I focus specifically on Gabriel Osorio\u2019s In the Stars<\/a><\/em> (Chile, 2023), produced by the animation studio PunkRobot which was founded by the Chilean animator himself, for the animated anthology series Star Wars: Visions<\/em> Volume 2, as an example of what might be termed lociversality.<\/p>\n Figures 1. Chilemonos 2024 Official Poster. Source: <\/strong>https:\/\/chilemonos.cl\/descargas\/vancouver\/CMH2024_Poster.pdf<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Figure 2. \u201cOur Voices\u201d Round Table led by Dr. Benjamin Bryce (Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia, and Chair of the Latin American Studies Program). Source: <\/strong>https:\/\/radixanimacion.com\/noticias\/chilemonos-vancouver-conclusiones-2024\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Despite their diversity, the films were united by their engagement with broadly recognizable concerns, from gender-based violence (Miguel Ot\u00e1lora\u2019s Una porci\u00f3n por envase<\/em> [One Serving per Can<\/em>, Colombia, 2022] and memory (Sof\u00eda Rosales Arreola\u2019s La casa de la memoria<\/em> [House of Memory<\/em>, Mexico, 2020]) to historical trauma (Hugo Covarrubias\u2019s Bestia<\/em> [Beast<\/em>, Chile, 2021]) and the revitalization of Indigenous cultures (In the Stars<\/em>). While some approached these issues through metaphor and allegory, rendering their narratives as universally legible, Osorio\u2019s film demonstrated how animation can broach such themes in a particular cultural and historical context without sacrificing broader relevance. In doing so, it exemplified Latin American animation\u2019s \u201clociversal\u201d quality: stories deeply rooted in local realities yet capable of resonating across cultural and geographic boundaries.<\/p>\n This quality has become a trademark for Osorio, the Santiago-based animator, who gained international recognition with Historia de un oso<\/em> (Bear Story<\/em>, 2014), winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2016. The film follows a former circus bear who builds an intricate mechanical diorama that reenacts the life he once shared with his wife and son before being taken from them against his will. Inspired by the experiences of political exile under the Pinochet dictatorship, it transforms a particular and deeply personal story \u2013 that of the director\u2019s grandfather, Leopoldo Osorio (\u201coso\u201d in Spanish means bear) \u2013 into a broad, emotionally resonant narrative for spectators who understand the suffering caused by the forced separation of a family (Fenoll 52).<\/p>\n With less subtlety, Osorio achieves the same lociversal negotiation with In the Stars<\/em>. He co-wrote, edited, and directed the fifteen-minute film, which reframes the genocide of the Selk\u2019nam people in Tierra del Fuego under the banner of colonial expansion through the iconography of Star Wars<\/em>. The short follows two orphaned sisters, Tichina and Koten who are the last of their kind, as they navigate a world devasted by imperial occupation, particularly through the extraction of water.<\/p>\n The Star Wars<\/em> franchise, which repeatedly links imperial expansion to resistance and cultural and familial continuity, provides a particularly effective lens for reimagining the history of the Selk\u2019nam. Not least, Osorio explains, because \u201cStar Wars<\/em>, at its core, is mostly about families that are separated and overcome pain through hope,\u201d making it \u201cthe perfect place to tell this story\u201d (qtd. in Busch). It fits neatly into the franchise, parallelling in many ways The Mandalorian<\/em> (2019\u2013), where cultural heritage becomes a means of collective survival for the small population under the threat of being wiped out by imperial violence. In Punkrobot\u2019s short film, the stars, only visible in the final moments once the pollution clears, function as symbols of Selk\u2019nam cultural continuity, linking ancestral memory to future possibility, particularly for subsequent generations, embodied by the sisters. The countless stars become a literal constellation of cultural practices, symbols, histories, and memories that connect past generations to future ones.<\/p>\n Thus, In the Stars<\/em> offers a critique of Chile\u2019s current water crisis due to its ongoing privatization alongside questions of Selk\u2019nam cultural resurgence and futurity, while simultaneously connecting to wider concerns with colonialism legacies and human rights. Speaking on behalf of his co-writers \u2013 Antonia Herrera and Francisco Ortega \u2013 Osorio notes that Latin America as a whole \u201cwent through similar processes of colonization at different times in history. We felt that there was a very important issue that we needed to address as Latin Americans\u201d (Rodr\u00edguez).\u00a0In other words, beneath, or even despite, In the Stars<\/em>\u2019s local textures, there lies a story recognizable throughout Latin America.<\/p>\n Figure 3. Still from In the Stars<\/em>. <\/strong>Source: <\/strong>https:\/\/www.starwars.com\/news\/star-wars-visions-in-the-stars-interview<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The film\u2019s visual design further reinforces its lociversality. Research trips to Patagonia for the PunkRobot animation studio multidisciplinary team shaped the aesthetic development of In the Stars<\/em>, while 3D scans of actual Patagonian landscapes, flora, and natural elements were integrated directly into the animated environment and the design of the characters. The result, in Osorio\u2019s words, is a visual identity that embeds \u201csome essence of Patagonia\u201d within the iconography of the original Star Wars<\/em> films (qtd. in Fabello).<\/p>\n Figure 4. Still from In the Stars<\/em>. <\/strong>Source: <\/strong>https:\/\/www.starwars.com\/news\/star-wars-visions-in-the-stars-interview<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Furthermore, if Star Wars<\/em> is particularly suited to this story, animation, thanks to its \u201ccondition of being fabricated<\/em>\u201d (emphasis original, trans. mine, Hern\u00e1ndez 6), is even better suited to it: as Betancourt suggests, animation is a medium \u201cpushes back against colonial and capitalist ideas of what the world is, and can look like,\u201d and allows filmmakers to \u201cdream up lost histories and possible futures with equal ease\u201d (79). Osorio\u2019s short film participates in a wider lineage of Indigenous animation, including works supported by the National Film Board of Canada<\/a>, that uses world-building to render visible forms of knowledge and experience frequently obscured \u2013 if not nearly obliterated \u2013 by colonialism and colonial modes of representation. If, as Brigitta Hosea argues, colonialism results in the destruction or marginalization of local and Indigenous knowledge systems (5), animation\u2019s overtly fabricated nature offers a powerful counterpoint. The medium foregrounds its own fabricatedness<\/em> or constructedness, allowing filmmakers to rebuild histories and ways of knowing that colonial narratives have sought to supress and even erase. Michif and Red River M\u00e9tis creator Amanda Strong\u2019s Inkwo for When the Starving Return<\/em> (2024) for example \u2013 an animated adaptation of a short story by T\u0142\u0131\u0328ch\u01eb Dene storyteller Richard Van Camp \u2013 similarly draws on Indigenous cosmology and speculative storytelling to envision continuance, two lifetimes from now, beyond colonial violence and climate change.<\/p>\n PunkRobot Studio also pushes back against cinema\u2019s commercial aims, as In the Stars<\/em> was conceived to be primarily commemorative, and even political. The franchise-commissioned project becomes a vehicle for bringing \u201cvisibilitiy and valorization\u201d to what remained a \u201clittle-known story\u201d (trans. mine, Universidad de las Americas), aligning the film with the Chilean animation studio\u2019s portfolio of politically-charged films. In the hands of PunkRobot Studios, the globally recognizable franchise is itself a vehicle through which local knowledge is mobilized, as In the Stars<\/em> demonstrates how lociversal narratives can circulate through transnational popular culture whether made for local audiences or for those far, far away.<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Betancourt, Manuel. \u201cAnimating History at a Cellular Level.\u201d Film Quarterly<\/em>, vol. 75, no. 2, 2021, pp. 76\u201379. University of California Press<\/em>, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1525\/fq.2021.75.2.76<\/a>.<\/p>\n Busch, Jenna. \u201cHow Star Wars: Visions Season 2 Drew Inspiration From Real-World History of Colonialism<\/em>,\u201d 10 April 2023, https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/1253856\/star-wars-visions-season-2-inspiration-from-real-world-history-colonialism\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fabello, Jade. \u201cThe Chilean Influences Behind Star Wars: Visions<\/em>\u2019 In the Stars<\/em>.\u201d StarWars.com<\/em>, 11 Dec. 2023, https:\/\/www.starwars.com\/news\/star-wars-visions-in-the-stars-interview. Accessed 7 Aug. 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fenoll, Vicente. \u201cAnimation, documentary and memory. The animated representation of the Chilean dictatorship.\u201d\u00a0Cuadernos. Info<\/em>, vol.43, 2018, pp. 45-56.<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez, Mar\u00eda Lorenzo. \u201cMundos imaginados.\u201d\u00a0Con A de animaci\u00f3n<\/em>\u00a0vol. 13, 2021, pp. 6-9.<\/p>\n Hosea, Birgitta. \u201cDecolonizing Animation.\u201d Animation Practice, Process & Production<\/em>, vol. 12, no. 1, 2023, pp. 3\u201310. Intellect, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1386\/ap3_00040_2<\/p>\n Osorio, Gabriel, director. 2023. In the Stars<\/em> (Season 2, Episode 6), Star Wars Visions 2.<\/em> PunkRobot.<\/p>\n Rodr\u00edguez, Andr\u00e9s. \u201c\u2018In the Stars,\u2019 a \u2018Star Wars\u2019 Story Inspired by the Indigenous Peoples of Patagonia.\u201d El Pa\u00eds<\/em>, 14 May 2023, El Pa\u00eds a Rodr\u00edguez, Andr\u00e9s. \u201c\u2018In the Stars,\u2019 a \u2018Star Wars\u2019 Story Inspired by the Indigenous Peoples of Patagonia.\u201d El Pa\u00eds, 14 May 2023, El Pa\u00eds article. Accessed 1 June 2026.rticle<\/a>. 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