Partizan Adds Five Directors to UK Music Video Roster, Appoints Danny Herman to Lead Division
February 5, 2026
Fresh off a successful festival run, Paris-based designer/director Almir Nago just dropped us his new passion project, an artful, fractured, and often surreal short film produced in collaboration with the team at Mathematic Studio.
Almir Nago: “Mind Distress is a about a man drowning in anxiety, searching for an escape. As reality unravels, he faces a choice: break free, or embrace his inner turmoil and turn it into something greater.
“The project originated from ideas I had been developing for several years. In 2022, these concepts merged into an animatic I built using Photoshop, After Effects, and Cinema 4D. My goal was to explore the theme of anxiety in an abstract and intuitive way, leaving space for the viewer’s interpretation.
“Mind Distress is a about a man drowning in anxiety, searching for an escape. As reality unravels, he faces a choice: break free, or embrace his inner turmoil and turn it into something greater.”
“I presented the project to Mathematic Studio, who were immediately onboard to produce it. That’s when the real challenge began, as the visual identity and art direction weren’t fully defined yet.
“Since this was a passion project, our main challenge was to complete the film within a reasonable time frame. Working with a small, lean team turned out to be a strength, allowing for seamless communication despite the technical hurdles.
“We chose Blender for its efficiency and its versatility with NPR shaders while our character pipeline remained in Maya. We developed a custom tool to seamlessly transfer the animation data from Maya into Blender, and I hand-painted most of the backgrounds, often using the 3D base as a starting point.
“We initially set a deadline for early 2024 to align with the festival season, but at that stage, the film was still a V1 that needed more love. I spent the rest of the year refining the project — repainting backgrounds, polishing the compositing, and fine-tuning the edit.”
Production: Mathematic
Director/art director: Almir Nago
EP: Guillaume Marien, Guillaume Audibet
Post-Production: Alice Da Costa, Vadim Hense
Animation Lead: Valere Amirault
Animator: Matthieu Barbaza, Mario Latcher
Rigging Supervisor: Guillaume Boudeville
Rigging: Nicolas D’hondt, Lucas De Boer
3D Generalist: Anna Danton, Hortense Mba, Yann Roussel, Loevan Thomas
Character Artist: Alice Remer
2D Animator: Louise Pigner, Issakha Mbacke, Victor PATARD
Color Script: Sélène Chauveau
Animation interns: Alexi Azibert, Léa Corsi, Mona Khamassi, Mathias Moltena
Original music: Lucien Krampf
Music supervisor: Joseph Petitpain – BMM Network
Sound Design: Cult Studio
Producer: Arnaud Coutray de Pradel
Mix & Sound Design: René-Pierre T. Guérin, Théo Porcet
Foley Artist: Charles St André
Voice: Sam Avant
