ESDESIGN talent reaches the final of the Mediterraneo Festival Corto with ‘Corazón de Cartón’
Catalina Ferreira Martín, an alumna of the Master’s Degree in Illustration and Animation at ESDESIGN, Barcelona School of Design, part of Planeta Formación y Universidades, has been selected as a finalist at the Mediterraneo Festival Corto 2026 with her short film Corazón de Cartón. This international recognition highlights an audiovisual project that combines craftsmanship and animation techniques to address, from a poetic and symbolic perspective, a social issue such as extreme inequality.
A short film that turns inequality into a visual story
Corazón de Cartón is a short film born from a personal concern about extreme inequality and its normalisation in society. It is an intimate and poetic animation that focuses on one of its most extreme manifestations: the illegal organ trade.
The film tells the story of a father and his son within a dehumanised system in which the body becomes a commodity. Cardboard is used as the central element and conceptual thread because it is a fragile, everyday material associated with precariousness and disposability. At the same time, it possesses the resilience needed to build and sustain a narrative universe.
Each setting and character was cut out and created by hand, and subsequently animated using a combination of stop motion, cut-out animation and digital compositing. Catalina’s work creates a visual universe that contrasts misery and survival, seeking to symbolise resilience. The result is a dialogue-free short film in which the materiality of the process becomes an essential part of the narrative and a way of approaching a complex reality through the language of animation. The film raises a fundamental question: to what extent is there a genuine choice when circumstances leave few alternatives?
Mediterraneo Festival Corto, a benchmark for international short films
Corazón de Cartón was selected as a finalist in the Animation section of the sixteenth edition of the Mediterraneo Festival Corto, held from 1 to 5 July 2026. The international short film festival has a 16-year history and was recognised by UNESCO in 2016 and 2025.
The competition is based in Diamante and organised by CineCircolo Maurizio Grande in collaboration with MATCHNEWS magazine, DIGIESSE Radio, the Italian Federation of Film Clubs (FEDIC) and Amnesty International Italy. The event aims to promote and raise the profile of independent filmmakers and production companies, with a particular focus on human rights, through six sections spanning fiction, documentary, animation and school cinema.
At ESDESIGN, we celebrate this recognition of the talent within our alumni community, which reflects the school’s commitment to education connected to professional practice, creativity and innovation.
