Before the Césars, The Animal Kingdom wins a prestigious prize
Thomas Cailley’s film won the 2023 Louis-Delluc Prize.
The Animal Kingdom is one of the most daring feature films of the year, a stunning masterpiece as we wrote in Première at the time of its theatrical release. While the film has more than its place at the Césars, Release tells us that he has already been rewarded with the prestigious Louis-Delluc Prize, this Wednesday, December 6. This award is called the “Goncourt of Cinema” and was created in homage to Louis Delluc, film critic and director of the French avant-garde of the 1920s.
The film is a hybrid work, like its story, at once ecological fable, teen movie and fantasy film. We are immersed in medias res in a very near future in which a mysterious illness transforms humans into animals. A father and his son (Romain Duris And Paul Kircher, revelation of the year) are desperately trying to find the boy’s mother, suffering from this disease and lost in the lush forest of the south of France.
The film reached one million admissions last week, proving that an unclassifiable proposition, at the crossroads of genres, can appeal to French audiences. This is the second film of Thomas Cailley After The fighters in 2014. It is co-written with Pauline Munier and it was designed as an artisanal film, with the overwhelming majority of special effects and makeup done without digital tools. The Animal Kingdom is still in theaters for those who would like to discover it.
The Louis Delluc Prize for best first film went to Rapture, by Iris Kaltenbäck, a powerful drama with Hafsia Herzi and Alexis Manenti.
Thomas Cailley deciphers the opening sequence of The Animal Kingdom
