Sofia Alaoui, the winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, has made a triumphant return to the festival with her groundbreaking supernatural Film(Animalia Drama), captivating audiences worldwide.
A Brief About The Animalia Drama’s Maker
Sofia Alaoui, a French-Moroccan filmmaker hailing from Casablanca, is a rising talent in the Arab world. In 2020, she won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for her supernatural short film “So What If The Goats Die.” Following this success, she directed the fantasy short “The Lake” for 20th Century DIGITAL and Hulu.
She was born in Casablanca to a Moroccan father and a French mother and raised between Morocco and China, moved to Paris to study cinema after graduating from high school in Casablanca.
When she returned to Morocco in 2017, she founded Jiango Films and made her feature directorial debut with “Animalia,” which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
Official Teaser & About The Drama
The experience of producing Sofia Alaoui’s first feature-length script, “Animalia,” a science-fiction drama set in modern Morocco, has been fulfilling. “Animalia” is a one-of-a-kind and refreshing contribution to the world of film, with its cryptic, mysterious, and hermetic features highlighting Alaoui’s original and unique directorial voice.
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What comes to mind when we think about science fiction in the film? Are we captivated by amazing technology that pushes the limits of possibility? Or do we see aliens coming and controlling our world? While these components might be exhilarating, the genre has a deeper and more compelling quality that can be subtle but equally spellbinding.
The uncanny takes center stage in “Animalia drama,” writer-director Sofia Alaoui’s feature debut. The film uses enigmatic powers to change the everyday, distorting the familiar environment in new and eerie ways. Rather than attempting to completely explain these events, the film embraces their mysterious nature, blending the strange into the mundane and creating a lasting impact via its fluidity. While the characters are not as complex as one might want, the entire experience of the film is intriguing.
As the story unfolds in the Animalia Drama, Itto (Oumaima Barid), a visibly pregnant lady in her late twenties, breaks social conventions by interacting with home employees and making her own food in the kitchen of her rich adoptive family. This irritates her authoritarian, controlling mother-in-law (Souad Khouyi), who already regards Itto as worthless owing to her Berber background and inferior social standing. Despite the fact that she is married to the family’s favorite son, Amine (Mehdi Dehbi), she is seen as inferior.
Itto’s relationship with her mother-in-law is strained, which is one reason why Amine and the others leave town for a business transaction, leaving Itto alone and content with some alone time away from her mother-in-law’s judgment. law’s She treasures little moments of independence, such as taking a nice bath, reclining, and eating whatever she wants since they provide a brief respite from her closely regulated existence in the Animalia Drama.
Her life is turned upside down by an unidentified global weather disaster. Army vehicles pass by, cell phones go dead, and she has to find her way to Khourigba, a fortified village beyond the Atlas Mountains. After depending on a deceptively kind neighbor, Itto and her pregnant child are stuck in a fearful town filled with odd pets and bizarre bird behavior.
Despite the warnings, Itto is adamant about reaching Amine. Following a failed effort to steal a tricycle from hotel owner Fouad, he reluctantly agrees to carry Itto across the mountains. A sense of obligation and responsibility to a lady in need drives Fouad, a fellow Berber, more than the money promised by Itto. He questions Itto’s newfound views on money, status, and power.
In the Animalia Drama, Sofia Alaoui leaves the consequences of an alien contact open-ended, implying just cosmetic modifications at most. Itto, the protagonist, meets strange guys who may be responding to the incident, possessors, or guides to safety and enlightenment.
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