Animated Short Film Oscar Contender
THE ORIGINALS
Is Now Streaming on The New Yorker
Directed by Alfie Koetter and Cristina Costantini
The award-winning animated short documentary film “The Originals” directed by Alfie Koetter and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Cristina Costantini, and produced by XTR and Muck Media, débuted on The New Yorker’s digital channels as part of the magazine’s award-winning Screening Room series.
“The Originals” is presented by the New Yorker Studios. It joins the magazine’s award-winning “Screening Room” series, a collection of fictional films that will make you laugh, cry, and challenge your view of the mundane and the extraordinary.
“The Originals” is narrated by the filmmakers’ former landlord Matty “Square” Ruggiero and his childhood gang, the Union Street Boys. The five friends tell their story of what it was like to grow up in an Italian American neighbourhood in South Brooklyn, where money was tight but friendships were tighter.
“This animated documentary is a love letter to our old neighbourhood, to our former landlord Matty ‘Square,’ and to the vibrant enclaves that immigrants built and continue to build in this country,” said Costantini and Koetter, both children of immigrants themselves.
“‘The Originals’ captures the charm and beauty of a neighbourhood lost in this fast-changing world—but with the hope to find a better path forward and embrace the change,” Soo-Jeong Kang, The New Yorker’s Executive Director of Programming, said.
