Animalia: a feminist meditation on the vast, unknown natural and cosmic world
French-Moroccan director Sofia Alaoui’s 2023 Sundance-award-winning sci-fi debut is coming to UK cinemas
Sofia Alaoui’s Sundance-award-winning debut, Animalia, became a festival darling back in 2023. The French-Moroccan director had been making shorts for a decade and was best known for So What If the Goats Die, which employed sci-fi and western tropes to tell the story of a shepherd in the Atlas mountains. With her feature debut she captured a grander and more nuanced existential terror.
The film-maker has set much of her work in Morocco, creating her own production company there and searching the country for non-professional actors who could authentically capture their shared homeland. Now, after a long-protracted global release, Animalia finally comes to the UK in select cinemas, thanks to the distribution arm of the TAPE Collective.
Animalia opens quietly, but it’s a silence that can be cut by a knife. The film starts inside the ornate but oppressive compound of a wealthy family in rural Morocco, where Itto (Oumaima Barid), newlywed and pregnant, negotiates the rigid codes of her in-laws. Their household is a world unto itself: sparkling chandeliers hang above mosaic floors; plush chairs sit on intricately woven carpets and a meticulously maintained fountain flows in the courtyard.
It is exquisitely luxurious but isolated and, through the screen, you can almost feel the weight of the claustrophobic atmosphere. We come to understand Itto’s position in the household is entirely defined by social hierarchies across class and gender.
As an Amazigh woman from a modest background, by wider society’s standards she has done very well for herself, marrying into this highly respectable family. Yet her acceptance is fragile. Her mother-in-law never warms beyond polite civility.
Alaoui’s attention to those domestic interactions is precise; even in their quietness, they convey the power structures that are understood and upheld by all. Itto’s defiant spirit is not dramatic or outrageous. It is in her ease across class lines, her choice to eat what she wants, her refusal to entirely conform to a version of perfection dictated by generations of women who came before her.
Then the world outside shifts after a global event — a combination of meteorological and extraterrestrial phenomena — social norms shatter and, perhaps, what it means to be human is forever changed.
Itto, separated from her husband Amine (Mehdi Dehbi), must navigate a landscape that she no longer understands. Her odyssey across Morocco’s deserts, jagged mountains and small, isolated towns becomes a meditation on the freedom of an uncertain future.
Animalia plays with science fiction tropes, alluding to the supernatural and technological advancement gone wrong, but there are no visible spaceships or monologues on the evils of AI. Instead, Alaoui leans into ambiguity: green-lit skies, mists that seem to have a mind of their own and animals that act out of character in a way that hints at forces beyond comprehension.
There is a deliberate vagueness in Alaou’s storytelling and, while it creates an atmosphere of mystery, it sometimes leaves the narrative feeling frustratingly indecisive.
This lends Animalia a meditative, immersive quality, but it may also test the patience of viewers seeking clarity. The alien and meteorological phenomena amplify the themes set out in the film’s opening, reflecting how individuals respond to the unknown. There are no easy answers to be had here. Alaoui’s film is about presence and reflection, not resolution.
Despite these challenges, the film always brings you back to the beauty of Alaoui’s intimate camera and Noé Bach’s cinematography, which captures the tension between stifling luxurious interiors and the stunning vast horizons of Morocco’s natural spaces. The mountains, deserts, and towns feel like active participants in Itto’s journey, shaping her experience and reflecting her inner state and Alaoui’s narrative highlights the distance between the natural and socially constructed world without overt moralising.
Its narrative and formal structure speaks to directors like Terrence Malick and Denis Villeneuve’s knack for visual poetry across sun-dappled landscapes. There is a deliberate patience to the storytelling, a willingness to dwell on moments of transition and internal reflection.
Amine Bouhafa’s score complements the personality and complexity of the text with haunting music of strings that slowly creep into scenes.
Animalia is a debut of remarkable sophistication. It is both a feminist meditation and a contemplation on the vast unknowability of the natural and cosmic world. Rather than trying to outsmart its viewers, the film’s strengths lie in inviting them inwards into visual language, authenticity and nuanced performances.
Animalia is in select UK cinemas from 12 December.
