Short Films

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International Competition

ANIMALIA
PARMI NOUS

• Director: Sofia Alaoui
• FRANCE, MOROCCO, QATAR / 2023 / DCP / Colour / 90’ / French, Arabic, Berber; Turkish, English s.t.

• Screenplay: Sofia Alaoui
• Director of Photography: Noé Bach
• Editing: Héloïse Pelloquet
• Music: Amine Bouhafa
• Cast: Oumaïma Barid, Mehdi Dehbi, Fouad Oughaou
• Producer: Margaux Lorier, Toufik Ayadi, Christophe Barral
• Production Co.: Totem Films
• World Sales: Totem Films

2023 Sundance Special Jury Award–World Cinema Dramatic

The feature film debut from Morocco-born filmmaker Sofia Alaoui, Animalia is an inriguing sci-fi-fantasy that explores dogma, social structure, and the place of women in contemporary Morocco. Itto, a young woman from a modest background, is slowly adapting to the privileged codes of her husband’s bourgeois family. But when supernatural incidents put the country in a state of emergency, Itto finds herself separated from her husband and new family. Alone, pregnant, and looking for her way back, she finds herself liberated from constraints on this physical and spiritual journey. ‘We have stuck Arab cinema in a pigeon-hole,’ says director Alaoui, ‘I want to fight against these stereotypes.’

This film was a Meetings on the Bridge participant.