Animalia

Winner! Jury Award for Creative Vision, Sundance Film Festival 2023

Heavily pregnant Itto looks forward to a day of peace and quiet when she gets her affluent household mostly to herself after her husband, Amine, goes away on business. She’s quickly lost sight of her modest origins and has adapted to her new family’s detached opulence. But when a mysterious state of emergency is declared nationwide, Itto struggles to find help; meanwhile, increasingly ominous events and strange weather phenomena suggest a supernatural presence is nearing. While frantically searching for a way back to Amine, Itto unexpectedly finds emancipation and the possibility of solace in a new world order.  For her astonishing feature debut, director Sofia Alaoui deploys a hypnotic visual style to birth an imaginative sci-fi drama that explores the unsettling circumstances of a world that no longer seems recognizable. (Dir.by Sofia Alaoui, 2023, Morocco/Qatar/France, in Arabic/French/Berber languages with English subtitles, 90 mins., Not Rated)

Other festivals: Sundance, Munich, Hong Kong