A tough female bull runner is driven to the limit in this intense, violent fantasy.
Twenty-something Nemja works on a ranch and becomes the first woman to perform as a bull runner, a locally popular spectacle. She’s accepted by her male colleagues, with whom she celebrates her first performance during a long, booze-soaked night. In its aftermath, Nemja’s life is turned upside down.
In her second film, director Emma Benestan shows us a part of France rarely seen in movies: the wide plains of the Camargue with their yellow grass and wild cows. Benestan portrays the close-knit community of landowners, seasonal workers and their families intimately. In this male-dominated environment, there’s also room for the ultra-sensitive Tony, and a patriarch who has fatherly feelings for Nemja. Oulaya Amamra is phenomenal as the film’s equally tough and vulnerable protagonist, for whom the meaning of the celebrations, the drinking and the communal solidarity slowly starts to change. Animale is an intense, brooding and violent fantasy from a highly idiosyncratic filmmaker.
The screening on 29 October includes a Q&A with director Emma Benestan.
