Itto, a young woman from a modest rural background, is slowly adapting to the Moroccan privileged codes of her husband’s family. But when supernatural events 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 emancipation.
We have two exclusive clips from the chilling women-led Sci-Fi/Mystery/Thriller, Animalia, written and directed by Sundance Grand Jury Winner Sofia Alaoui. The film stars Oumaïma Barid, Mehdi Dehbi, and Fouad Oughaou. Animalia premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and won the New Visions Award.
Animalia is available now on Digital and On Demand. Check out the exclusive clips below excerpts from our own Mel's review from Sundance.
By turns esoteric, enigmatic, and hermetic, Animalia marks the arrival of a new, freshly original cinematic voice, albeit an atypical, idiosyncratic, unorthodox one.While Alaoui interweaves a not-so-gentle critique of a heavily stratified Moroccan society, she deliberately keeps the nature and extent of the meteorological phenomenon ambiguous and undefined. Instead, she focuses on the reactions to the potential visitation of extraterrestrial beings to our world and how a particular organized religion (Islam) would respond to a world-changing event, offering meaningful comfort to some and empty platitudes to others.Alaoui also leaves the overriding question open of how much the encounter with an alien intelligence, if any, would lead to significant, real change on a social, cultural, and political level, suggesting, contrary to Itto’s direct experience, that those changes would be felt superficially by some or even many.