A brilliant and prolific animator, and a regular presence at Curtas since 2006, with nine works shown at the festival to date, Theodore Ushev gifts us this year with a film inspired by Georgi Gospodinov’s homonymous book, “The Physics of Sorrow” – the author also inspired his previous movie, “Blind Vaysha”, programmed at Vila do Conde as well. Through encaustic painting animation, a technique never previously used in cinema that combines beeswax with pigments and was created in ancient Egypt to depict their most distinguished deceased figures, Ushev offers us his own existential maze – assuming himself as a version of Gospodinov – in a captivating and personal foray into sadness, loss and abandonment. In a whirlwind of memories, archives, collections, self-reflections, experiences, and emotions, “The Physics of Sorrow” shows us, through its remarkable expressionist stroke, that all humans are a potentially limitless repository of experiences, a universal archive of senses and history, a time capsule containing inordinate residues from the past, as well as unexpected and disorienting recontextualizations, towards some kernel of truth. Because, as the film narrator puts it, “nothing is as sterile as forgetting”. (SR)