Fear itself is the illness in Tito e os Pássaros, a 2019 Brazilian animated adventure in which a shy ten-year-old has to find a cure that may be hidden in the songs of birds.
What is Tito e os Pássaros about?
Tito is ten, quiet, and lives with his mother. Then a strange epidemic begins to move through the population: people fall ill the moment they become frightened, and the more the fear spreads, the more patients there are. Tito comes to suspect that the answer lies in work his father was doing before he went missing, a study of birdsong. With a small group of friends he sets off to track down an antidote. The hunt for a remedy gradually turns into two other searches as well: one for the father who is absent from his life, and one for a clearer sense of who Tito himself is.
About the cast
Three directors share the credit: Gabriel Bitar, Gustavo Steinberg and André Catoto Dias. The voice cast listed for the production is Pedro Henrique, Mateus Solano, Denise Fraga, Matheus Nachtergaele and Otávio Augusto. As with any animated feature, these performances are heard rather than seen, and they carry a story whose central figures are children facing a very adult-sized problem.
Context & significance
Tito e os Pássaros comes from Brazil and is filed under three genres: adventure, animation and drama. That last label matters. On the surface this is a family story built around a child hero and a quest, but its premise, a sickness set off by fear, gives it a more serious undertone than a typical children's cartoon. Parents may find it a useful starting point for talking with children about being afraid and about how panic passes from one person to the next. At 73 minutes it is short even by the standards of animated features, which makes it an easy fit for a single evening with younger viewers. Its reception has been moderately warm.
Watching Tito e os Pássaros on Ktime
Tito e os Pássaros is on K-Time with a Persian dub, so Farsi-speaking children can follow it without reading subtitles. Reading this page is free; playing the film requires logging in to a K-Time account. K-Time is built for Persian-speaking households abroad, with a Farsi interface throughout.