Several characters in “Decorado” are on the brink of a mental breakdown. Poverty, unemployment and a constant state of paranoia have driven them to feel like they are trapped inside an artificial set, where every element in their lives feels fake and orchestrated by an ominpresent Big Brother-like business known as ALMA (Almighty Limitless Megacorporative Agency). And their suspicions might not be unfounded. Following “Birdboy: The Forgotten Children” and “Unicorn Wars,” the third feature from Spanish director Alberto Vázquez (all three of them have won the Goya Award for Best Animated Film) is an expansion of his 2016 short film, also titled “Decorado” (which earned him another Goya).

Like its gruesome predecessors, his latest full-length work features adorably designed anthropomorphic animals (and mushrooms) navigating bleak realities and confronting existentialist concerns. The extraordinary dissonance between his films’ classically cartoonish aesthetic and their thematic bleakness makes Vázquez one of the most singular and consistently surprising animation auteurs working today. As the industry continues to pigeonhole the medium as a vehicle for children’s entertainment, Vázquez doesn’t only reject such imposition, but dismantles it one despair-fueled film at a time.

“It is not a symptom of health to adapt to a sick society,” says a young cat early on in “Decorado,” describing the unease that characters who inhabit this realm are experiencing. The statement is one among many hard-hitting aphorisms that ring devastatingly true for the state of our current world, as late-stage capitalism widens the gap between haves and have-nots, creating unsustainable conditions for millions of people. Our “decorado,” or set, is inching closer to the Orwellian circumstances that Vázquez’s creatures endure.

And what’s a married, jobless, middle-aged mouse to do in the face of such circumstances? Perpetually clad in a bathrobe, a symbol of how he’s wasting away without purpose, Arnold (Asier Hormaza) is losing touch with reality. His doctor believes he’s ill with derealization, but he doesn’t trust the pills he’s been prescribed (manufactured by ALMA like everything else). To make matters worse, his cartoonist wife Maria (Aintzane Gamiz) receives a visit from the Depression Fairy (Aintzane Crujeiras), a gray-skinned, dark-haired reinterpretation of Tinker Bell with bags under her eyes, who convinces her their marriage has run its course. Money problems, along with Arnold’s erratic psychological state, have compromised their marriage. Plus, Gregorio (Iñaki Beraetxe), a higher-up at ALMA, is romantically interested in Maria.

Times are tough for everyone, including Ronnie Duck or Pato Roni (voiced by Vázquez himself), a pathetic knockoff of Disney’s Donald Duck who was once a famous star for ALMA (also Spanish for “soul”), but now finds himself homeless and begging for coins. “The world is a wonderful stage, but it has a deplorable cast,” declares the ominous Gian Owl (Kandido Uranga), a feared creature that operates as ALMA’s surveillance tool over the nearby forest. There, among the trees, hides a collection of misfits: drug addicted rodents (ALMA provides the illicit drugs), a lonely harp-playing demon, and an inverse mermaid (fish’s head with human legs) aware of her monstrous physiology (these last two become a couple).

The absurdist hopelessness of “Decorado” extracts macabre comedy from every corner of Vázquez’s idiosyncratic microcosm: desperate for food, the many children of Mr. Mushroom, a salesperson for ALMA, have started eating each other. Meanwhile, Arnold’s imprisoned friend Chicken Crazy’s favorite food is a basket of friend poultry — cannibalism be damned. At every turn, “Decorado” goes for the most piercing, unexpected turn to further expose the viewer to the deranged environment wrought by the tight grip of ALMA.

Arnold wants to be free, but the only path to the manufactured happiness available here is selling one’s soul to ALMA and accepting all the anomalies as normal. Not dissimilar to how the need to make a living day in and day out forces most individuals to continue being part of the machine, while war, death, and chaos are delivered to us instantly via screens. The moment one starts perceiving what Arnold and friends undergo as excessively dismal, a quick peak at the live-action cruelty in action around the globe tempers that notion.

Through this one-of-a-kind, endlessly inventive fable, Vázquez comments on our sedated society, yet he strives for timelessness, rather than resorting to direct references to our modern era. (Technology doesn’t play a significant role here: Instead, the allegorical and the otherworldly reign.) With the help of his deceased “bro” Ramiro (Ander Vildósola), summoned back as a specter, Arnold tries to find what’s beyond the forest. His hope is a life that resonates with authentic emotion and not monotonous conformism. Risking it all with Maria by his side, he could either break out of this eerie matrix for good or discover he and everyone he knows are part of a collective production, à la “The Truman Show.”

Thanks to GKIDS, the distributor of independent and daring animation, Vázquez’s tonally challenging, hand-drawn chronicles have found their way to U.S. audiences. That’s an act of service in an animation landscape where most American studios fear crafting anything remotely unconventional or unequivocally adult-oriented. An argument can be had about what will end up being the “best” animated feature released in 2026 — it’s early — but there’s little chance another film can dethrone “Decorado” as the most mind-bending.