Anonymous Animals

The animal becomes human, the human becomes animal. At least as far as the balance of power in this horrendous mind game is concerned. Every encounter with the dominant species can be life-threatening. Whether it's hunting or “livestock farming” - the treatment is undignified, cruel and, as a consequence, often fatal. This extraordinary film at the interface between fantasy and horror has not only won numerous awards, but also poses painful questions about the status of animals in our society. Director Baptiste Rouveure on the genesis of the film: "The movie has its origins in an obsession: the image of a horse attacking a man in order to eat him. This unconscious nightmare image reinforced other real images that I had in my head from a childhood in the countryside. My proximity to a natural environment made me a privileged observer of a wild nature, but also a witness to man's fatal treatment of animals through exploitation and hunting. Over time, these sometimes bloody, macabre, cruel images have triggered a strong empathy towards the animal and a constant questioning of its place in our society. This carnivorous horse that haunted me was the result of a dysfunction, a sick and dying nature. During the writing of the film, this reversal of the food chain was then transformed into a transfer of bodies between humans and animals. The resulting anthropomorphic animals, according to our codes, act as dominant exploiters and hunters and carry within them a dehumanization towards the... human species. This role reversal thus places the human protagonists under the yoke of animal domination, for which there are nameless silhouettes of anonymous animals involved in various kinds of exploitation in which everything is interchangeable." (Source: Distributor UCM.One) "This medium-length directorial debut is disturbing not only because of its more atmospheric and suggestive than explicit aesthetics of cruelty, but also because the aggressors appear in human form, but with animal heads. The criticism of the bestiality of humanity that goes hand in hand with this motif, which reverses the human-animal relationship and thus exposes it, remains very simple and vague, but the production nevertheless succeeds in creating a horror film that is remarkable in its radicalism." (Encyclopedia of International Film)