Animals2017

Director
Greg Zglinski

Acters

Philipp Hochmair (Nik)
Birgit Minichmayr (Ana)
Mehdi Nebbou (Tarek)
Michael Ostrowski (Harald)
Mona Petri (Miša/Andrea/Prodavačica)

A collision with a sheep on a country road initiates a whole series of weird and unsettling experiences for Anna and Nick which ultimately leave them both incapable of being certain exactly where they are: in the real world, in their own imaginations – or in someone else’s imagination.

Andrea jumps out of a third floor window in a Viennese tenement building. Anna and Nick live in the very same building. She believes Nick used to have an affaire with Andrea and decides to try to start over in a holiday house in Switzerland. Meanwhile attractive Mischa is hired as housesitter for the Viennese flat. Anna can’t help to notice her physical likeness with Andrea. Even in far away Lousanne an ice cream vendour reminds her strongly of Andrea. Slowly various story levels start to overlap and dissolve into each other. On top of all of that strange things start happening in their holiday home, which apparently only Anna experiences. Anna starts to doubt her sanity, to suspect that she’s trapped in a parallel reality, from where there’s no way back. Is it because of her car crash with Nick? Is she imagining things? Or does Nick really start to engage in an affaire with the ice cream vendour, who looks so much like Andrea? Or is Mischa actually Andrea and dreams that Anna goes crazy?

“This darkly comic thriller about a married couple’s nightmarish alpine retreat pays obvious dues to Hitchcock, Polanski and Lynch, but is too stylish and self-aware to fall into the trap of mere pastiche. As a superior genre exercise, it is assured a healthy festival future, but venturesome distributors may also see the potential in its classy European psycho-horror pedigree.” – Hollywood Reporter

“A film that is transformed into a sublime four-handed symphony.” – CineEuropa

“All we can say: it just works, on a gut level and on an aesthetic level… Yet it’s not the destination, but the journey there which makes Tiere worthwhile and a wild box of fun. After the credits rolled, I wanted to see it again.” – Berlin Film Journal