ONLY THE ANIMALS
Film - CineMasters Competition Filmfest 2021

ONLY THE ANIMALS

Directed by Dominik Moll

Info

Director: Dominik Moll
Section: CineMasters Competition
Country: Germany, France
Year: 2019
PT: DIE VERSCHWUNDENE
OT: SEULES LES BÊTES
Language: French
Version: Original version with English subtitles
Cast: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Denis Ménochet, Laure Calamy, Damien Bonnard, Nadia Tereszkiewicz
16+

Logline

Various plot threads are woven into a thriller that reveals the dark underbelly of global capitalism.

This film starts with a scream: not from a human, but from a goat on the back of a moped being driven through Abidjan, the largest city in Côte d’Ivoire. In another, much colder part of the world, on a remote country road in France’s Massif Central, police discover an empty car the day after a snowstorm. Its owner is nowhere to be found. As becomes clear in the course of this film in ever surprising ways, several people were involved in her disappearance: a married couple who have apparently grown apart; a strange, solitary farmer with a dog; a young Parisian waitress; and that very moped driver in Abidjan. What they have in common is a longing for intimacy, which is also mixed with quite animalistic sexual desire. This film is an adaptation of Colin Niel’s crime novel “Seules les bêtes”.


You'll find a Q&A with ONLY THE ANIMALS director Dominik Moll here.

Meet the director

ONLY THE ANIMALS

Dominik Moll

Dominik Moll was born to a German father and a French mother in Bühl in southwestern Germany in 1962. He grew up in Baden-Baden and learned his craft at the City College of New York and the Paris Film School. In 1994 he presented his first feature film, INTIMITÉ. His following work WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY... had its world premiere at Cannes in 2000. The film was very popular with the French public and won 4 Césars, including for best director. It was followed by LEMMING (2005), THE MONK (2010), and NEWS FROM PLANET MARS (2016). ONLY THE ANIMALS (2020) is his most recent film. Moll has also directed for television: the British-French series THE TUNNEL (2013) and the German-French series EDEN, which was awarded the Grimme Preis in 2020.

Credits

Screenplay: Dominik Moll, Gilles Marchand
Original Material: Colin Niel
Director of Photography: Patrick Ghiringhelli
Film Editor: Laurent Rouan
Composer: Benedikt Schiefer
Costume Design: Isabelle Pannetier
Sound: François Maurel, Noemi Hampel, Matthias Schwab
Casting director: Agathe Hassenforder - Arda
Producer: Carole Scotta, Caroline Benjo, Barbara Letellier, Simon Arnal
Production Company: Haut et Court
Co-Producer: Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul
Co-Production Company: Razor Film Produktion
World Sales: The Match Factory GmbH
Distributor: OVALmedia Cologne