Gorillaz have never separated the visual from the musical, and ‘The Mountain, The Moon Cave & The Sad God’ is proof of exactly why that matters. The new 8-minute animated short film, streaming now, arrives alongside the band’s new album ‘The Mountain’, out now via their own Kong label, and it’s one of the most visually ambitious things they’ve ever put their name to.
Directed by Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett alongside Max Taylor and Tim McCourt of BAFTA-nominated London animation studio The Line, the film took 18 months and thousands of artist hours to complete. The result is a richly textured, hand-crafted homage to the golden era of 2D animation, reinterpreting Gorillaz through the timeless aesthetic of 1960s animated features.
The process was deliberate and exacting. Hand-painted backgrounds, real materials, practical effects, and period-accurate limitations guided every frame, with a hybrid analogue-digital workflow that actively resisted contemporary shortcuts. It’s a genuine celebration of traditional craftsmanship and human creativity at a time when both are increasingly rare.
The film follows Noodle, Murdoc, 2D, and Russel as they journey across India, having made their way to Mumbai with the help of 4 fake passports courtesy of a New York business acquaintance of Murdoc. The band has turned its back on international pop stardom, now immersed in the rhythms of mystical music-making as they navigate the mountainous terrain of life itself.
Those themes connect directly to ‘The Mountain’, which explores the journey of life and the thrill of existence across its full runtime. Hewlett’s return to the purest form of his art brings a detailed, beautiful intricacy to his distinctive style, while pushing it somewhere genuinely new.
For a band that has always operated on their own terms, ‘The Mountain’ and its accompanying short film represent Gorillaz at their most expansive and most themselves.