“I never thought about toning down the violence”: A review of the shocking film “Animals” with the director

Animals, a shocking film directed by Nabil Ben Yadir, is based on a horrific incident in Belgium in 2012. With this uncompromising work, the director offers us the February movie of the month Electroshock.

One day he will find the love of his life. He will become a family man and make everyone proud. One day it will be mature and fulfilled. What…

A shocking and moving story, the animals are taken from a horrific incident in Belgium in 2012. The film does not hold us back, it stirs up the aggression of young Brahim with a confusing realism.

AlloCiné: The film opens with a long scene at Brahim’s parents’ house, taking its time to gradually establish the character and making us discover the conflict he experiences in a visceral way. Did you want to start with this sequence from the beginning, so that we could better immerse ourselves in the horror of this crime?

Nabil Ben Yadir: The idea was to immerse Brahim in his daily life without leaving him for a second. Brahim’s filming for his mother’s birthday was in preparation for an even more intense immersion in his violence.

Your camera allows Brahim, so why is this a fairly radical bias?

The idea was to not let Brahim go, to follow him, as if there was a rubber band connecting the character to the camera from behind, and therefore he would not get too far away from him, otherwise the rubber would break. Everything around Brahim is strongly suggested by the voice. There is a lot of work at this level.

The idea was to immerse Brahim in his daily life without leaving him for a second.

When the film changes, when Brahim’s attack begins, you decide to shoot in cell phone mode. Why is this choice?

The depiction of violence permeated the entire making of the film. I didn’t want to say how I didn’t want to shoot it classically, because every shot had to be heavy.

The fact of shooting through the prism of mobile phones allowed me to get closer to reality, and at the same time, this impression of realism is created by the fact of leaving the freedom of the actors.

When you know that a movie is based on a bad story, you can be truly horrified by the barbarity of the crime and wonder how people could go about it. Why did you decide to stage Brahim’s Calvary violence so crudely? Did you consider mitigating this violence at the beginning of the project?

I never thought about toning down the violence. It was a choice that was clear in my head.

I never thought about mitigating violence. It was a choice that was obvious in my head. It was also the choice of the real victim’s father. If violence is suggested or toned down, we miss the original idea, which was to immerse ourselves in violence like our character.

How did you approach these sections with your actors, in particular? Sufiane ChilahWho interprets Brahim?

Everything was prepared, choreographed and accompanied by Mathieu Lardot and his team. A lot of choreographers put us to shame because they offered American-style fights with kicks and punches and it smelled fake.

Until the day I met Mate Lardo, with whom we did a long preparatory work. The idea was to have everything prepared, but it was important to give the impression of completely improvised realism.

Moreover, how did you find these wonderful actors, Sufiane and his family or the criminals, especially Geoffroy’s translator Vincent Overat, who has a cold?

Sufiane is a professional actor; He acted in my previous film Angle mort. He gained 17 kg for this film and I think he lost 15 kg for the animals. He is a great actor looking for roles that are far from his personality.

For killers, it’s something else. They have never acted before. Serkan, Gian, Lionel and Vincent were spotted by Sebastian Moradiolos. Vincent was spotted on the street. He passed the casting in such a way that I couldn’t believe it, and I immediately chose him. He is a working bomb. After filming, he joined Kurtrajme and played the role of Lupine in the following season. It went very well for him.

The ending is very surprising, with this wedding sequence and a final shot that leaves us speechless. How did you work to understand all the little details? Knowing that everything you say in the movie really happened.

It’s still a movie, and the idea of ​​this third part was important to us: to follow one of the killers the day after the act. We wanted to follow his relationship with his family and especially with his father.

Did you face any pressure or criticism when you said you were dealing with this very sensitive issue that involves several communities?

Yes… but when you see his father’s strength and what happened to Ihsane, you overcome the pressure.

What role did the victim’s father, Ihsane Jarfi, play in the conception of the film?

He gave me carte blanche, but I asked him to write a poem that his father would read to Brahim. It’s his poem.

Animals is co-produced by the brothers DardenWhat was their involvement in the work?

I produced the film with my company 1080 Films and seeing that we shot in Liege, which is their land, we decided to co-produce it. I hired their production designer, Igor Gabriel, who did an amazing job on the film.

And like them I shot them in chronological order, which is really a luxury. We especially collaborated with Delphine Thomson, their producer, who followed the project until the end and helped us a lot.