In THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, a visionary new thriller that drops viewers into an extraordinary world where mutations in human genetics cause people to transform into hybrid creatures, François (Roman Duris) does everything he can to save his wife, who is affected by this mysterious condition. As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, François embarks with Emile (Paul Kircher), their 16-year-old son, on a quest to find her with help from a local police officer (Adèle Exarchopoulos). From acclaimed director Thomas Cailley, the film world premiered as the opening night selection of Cannes Un Certain Regard.
The following is our interview with Thomas Cailley, director of THE ANIMAL KINGDOM:
Bijan Tehrani: Some may consider THE ANIMAL KINGDOM as a horror movie genre, but to me it was a poetic film about life
Thomas Cailley: I totally agree with you that this film is a journey and first and foremost an experience. I hope that it is a physical and a sensual experience. The film is about reconnecting with a bigger world and at least on the level of its intentions there’s something mythological about it, about having a different relationship with all that is alive around us, humans and animal and so poetry is at least as important as genre in this film
BT: Is THE ANIMAL KINGDOM about us going back to our origins?
TC: I still feel wonder that when you’re watching a film is such a great thing and that’s why the experience of Cinema is a unique one, so it really makes me happy to hear you say that I have the impression that I grew up in a world that was constantly becoming more and more impoverished with every passing year, that we are in a world in crisis there’s an environmental crisis, the biomass is disappearing, biodiversity is coming to an end. But rather than making yet another film about the arrival of the Apocalypse in which characters are pushing around their supermarket caddies in a desert and don’t know what to eat, I thought it would be so much more uplifting, so much more enjoyable to make a film in which the abnormality produces the exact opposite. In fact there is such a surplus of diversity that we don’t know what to do with it, that’s why I think that in a certain way, this film is utopian and it really makes me happy to hear that you experienced it as a journey to the beginning of life because that is the diversity we have on this planet today, it comes from from mutation.
BT: Could we say THE ANIMAL KINGDOM’s visual style is based on a fresh look to Surrealism?
TC: In the film, one of the main characters, François, quotes from French poet René Char who was a friend of André Breton the inventor of surrealism. But what your question makes me think is that, we didn’t try to invent a disconnected vision of the world. We portray the world as it exists, in the film it’s a realistic depiction of the city they are in, the relationship between the father and son and so on, there’s just one small shift, one shift changes and that’s humans turning into animals. And that brought to the story in a very natural way. People don’t get surprised by it , naturally one level above reality. We are not completely disconnected from reality, where I feel in superhero films one is completely disconnected from reality. your question also makes me think of something that the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze said in his definition of naturalism, he said that the real world as we know it, is a thin layer that we walk on below which they’re constantly monsters that are always ready to come out and I like that definition of naturalism it reminds me of the films of Miyazaki
BT: Acting in the film is superb, realistic and natural, how did you work with your actors? Did you have a lot of rehearsal sessions?
TC: We did a lot of rehearsal before we started shooting I started working with the actor Paul Kircher a year before the shoot started and he also trained with the choreographer to learn to use his body differently and to try to devise a physical vocabulary that was not only human and what was really interesting when he arrived on set was that all I had to do with him was to tell him to express things a little more or a little less just to very the intensity and often we found that I asked him to tone things down and he played things very softly or gently and I think that the rest of the work is done by the spectator, by the audience. Of Course Paul Kircher is playing the mutation but I think that the audience have their place in the film. Audience members see minuscule things in the film and sometimes they even see things that aren’t really there, but there are somehow in the hollows of the film and I think this is something very important to allow the audience its place in the film and to not deliver everything to them.
THOMAS CAILLEY
After studying at La Fémis in the screenplay department, Thomas Cailley directed PARIS
SHANGHAI (2011), a short film that won awards at numerous festivals.
His first feature film, LOVE AT FIRST FIGHT (LES COMBATTANTS) was a public success.
Presented and awarded at the Quinzaine des réalisateurs in Cannes in 2014, it received three
Césars the following year, including Best First Film.
Directed for Arte, his first series AD VITAM (6×52) was selected at the Toronto International
Film Festival and elected best French series of the year at Séries Mania in 2018.
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, presented in the Selection officielle at the opening night of Un
Certain Regard at the Festival de Cannes (2023) is his second feature film as a director.
FILMOGRAPHY
FILMS:
2023 ANIMAL KINGDOM
2014 LOVE AT FIRST FIGHT (LES COMBATTANTS)
2011 PARIS SHANGHAI
SERIES
2018 AD VITAM