In this short film, which was made during an animation residency offered by the Folimage production company, the young director Raúl 'Robin' Morales Reyes invites us to follow the voyage of a tiger with no stripes. This terrible deprivation brings ridicule from a pair of hard-laughing hyenas but also from young tigers who are lucky enough to have lovely stripes. As the humiliated, stripeless tiger tries to take out his frustration on his own reflection, a current sweeps him away from the river bank and takes him on a voyage of discovery - of himself. On his formative travels, this little tiger who suffers because he is not like the others meets a range of animals to whom he might not have paid any attention if he had not been born without stripes. These include an insect with a totally white shell amid a group of yellow-shelled associates, a lonely white butterfly and the shadow of a bear in his den. We see a whole animal world, from the skies to under the ground, milling about in the hot late afternoon sun. For a while the young tiger forgets about his sad condition. Thanks to the shadows formed by branches on his body, he dreams that he has stripes. Then, using a stick dipped in mud, he paints himself so that he finally looks the way he has always wanted. But when night comes he finds himself faced with himself and it is only then, at the end of his trail, that hope dawns anew. With animation that brings to mind certain impressionist paintings and features soft coloured sets, this lovely tale about childhood and difference teaches us tenderly that patience and perseverance are sometimes required in order to grow up and fit in. It also tells us that travelling not only enables us to see wonderful landscapes, but that it, above all, holds a mirror up to ourselves so that we can find out or rediscover who we are.
