Bull Running Supernatural Revenge Thriller Animale, Cannes Critics Week Closing Night

Posted by Martina Birk on Wednesday, September 18, 2024

A first clip has been unveiled for Emma Benestan‘s “Animale,” which closes the Cannes Film Festival‘s Critics’ Week strand this year.

The film is set in the Camargue region of the south of France, where daring youths participate in the local tradition of bull running. Only one woman, 22-year-old Nejma, takes her place in the arena. Taunting and evading the animals with increasing boldness, Nejma seeks to prove herself the equal of the men – inside and outside of the arena. But both situations put Nejma at risk, as a different threat looms over the community of riders: a bull is on the loose and young men are being killed. The film is designed as a supernatural fable that blends with the classic body horror, and the revenge thriller. 

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After several shorts and a documentary, “Animale” is Benestan’s second fiction feature after the acclaimed “Fragile” aka “Hard Shell, Soft Shell” (2021). The filmmaker’s background is editing, having worked for several years with Abdellatif Kechiche on Palme d’Or winner “Blue Is the Warmest Color” (2013) and Venice winner “Mektoub, My Love” (2017).

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“My debut feature was a romantic comedy, exploring male sensibility in what is expected to be a feminine context. In ‘Animale,’ I placed a woman protagonist in a male environment, in a genre typically more associated with masculinity — the Western,” Benestan says in the film’s press notes. “That’s very important to me: I like subverting genres, and telling stories that are anchored in a diverse context.”

“I had already made a documentary [“Fearless Girl,” 2019] about Marie Segrétier, who was the only woman who participated in bull running. In my work with Marie, I asked myself a lot about her place in the arena, and the toxic masculinity around her. I wanted to show the power and the strength that she has — and to show her violence as a form of rebellion against the domination that she’s faced her whole life, and against the iconography of injured and weak female bodies. At the time, I was working also on a genre series, and rewatching all the episodes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ — my teenage passion,” Benestan added.

The cast is led by Oulaya Amamra, Cesar winner for “Divines” (2016), who has worked with Benestan twice before on short “Summer of Sarah” (2015), which won her best actress at the Festival Premiers Plans Festival in Angers, and “Fragile.”

“I had never seen a bull before in my life. The first time I watched the race, I was very scared, just because they’re so huge. They’re massive. But I was mesmerized — I was fascinated by the animals. They were extraordinary partners, in a way, to the humans,” Amamra says in the press notes.

“When I watched them, I often felt that our souls were connected,” Amamra added. “That was the impression I had in the second scene in the arena, when I’m standing in front of them. I realized what it means when we say that animals give us back what we give them first. I really did feel, deep down inside, a sensitivity coming from this wild animal. And that’s a parallel with my character, of course. Nejma seems very sensitive, very delicate, but gradually, she reveals herself as a very powerful woman. The bulls are very powerful animals, but they can show fragility in the race that shows us that deep down in their souls, they are sensitive beings.”

Film Constellation, which has already sealed a raft of pre-sales, is handling sales on “Animale.”

Watch the clip here:

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