Perfection. There’s something deeply unsettling about it.Who gets to define it? How to decide when to stop? And what about the kind of perfection that smiles without blinking, sings on cue, and never asks why? Potlems, a short film directed by Alberto Allegri Rodríguez opens inside a porcelain nightmare – gleaming, cute and delicate, yet fragile in all the wrong places.The play begins with Ginger, a child born with a frown. Not a dramatic one. Not an act of rebellion. Just… a downward turn. But in this town of ever-grinning children, it’s enough to halt the music. Enough to make the Creator flinch.Ginger, the porcelain child born with a frown, in a town where everyone else is always smiling.This 3D mini-opera doesn’t try to hide its influences – its aesthetic is reverently worn: dusty reds, scuffed lacquer, that unmistakable stop-motion tactility of the 1970s. But where older films often dressed whimsy in innocence, Potlems lets its whimsy carry weight. There’s tension baked into every frame, like a smile held too long. We’re meant to be charmed – but never comfortable.Writer/director Rodríguez has spoken of disability, of vulnerability, of being shaped by hands that didn’t quite understand what they were making. That subtext hangs heavy here, even if it’s never spoken. Ginger isn’t just “wrong” in this world – he’s corrected. And it’s in that act, not in the flaw itself, where the true horror lies.What’s most striking is the film’s refusal to offer closure. The music swells, the lights flicker, but we’re left with more unease than catharsis. That, perhaps, is the point. Some stories aren’t meant to leave a positive message, or even a final one. They’re meant to fracture. Some characters aren’t fixed – they’re exposed. And like any wound, it may not return in the same place, time, or form – but it will return.“What started as a fun world-building concept evolved into an exploration of my feelings of vulnerability related to growing up with a disability” – Rodríguez on the inspiration behind PotlemsAt just a few minutes long, Potlems doesn’t scream to be heard. It hums – like a lullaby sung through clenched teeth. And in that hum, in that refusal to grin along, it finds something quietly radical.Not every face was made to smile. And maybe – just maybe – that’s not a flaw at all. It’s a quiet start – but not, it seems, the end. Potlems, a graduation short from Alberto Allegri Rodríguez and his team at The Animation Workshop, is only the beginning. A mini-series is already being imagined – a world of delicate nightmares, still unfolding.