Animalis Fabula Official Selections

Dogsville - Feature - Canada

1/12/2021

Dogsville is a tale of love and passion, a Shakespearean drama set in the world of dog sports. The unsung hero is a fiery ball of energy called Crocodile Crunch. The mutt, found abandoned at a horse auction, lacks the lines of pedigree treasured by her rivals. Nonetheless she has risen to the top in the agility world. Along her teammates, Radical Rabbit and Posh Piranha, she competes against the best purebred dogs in the world at the World Championship in the Netherlands. And while the dogs are innocent and just want to run, the same cannot be said about their humans. They have come here to win and will do anything to do so. Alliances are formed and just as routinely betrayed. Rising above the backstabbing, snitching, complaining and treachery, Crocodile Crunch is determined to prove that talent and heart can defeat bloodlines and privilege.

Director - Rosvita Dransfeld

As a cinema verite documentary filmmaker, I am always looking for creative and entertaining ways to paint a picture of the socio-political state of our world, reflecting on politics, economies and cultural developments. When I learned about the world of dog sports, I knew that I had found the perfect ‘parallel universe’ to reflect on National archetypes, and our boundless desire to win.

AniFab judge's aggregate scored Dogsville an 8 out of 10 with one judge writing, "An intimate glimpse into the intense world of dog agility through the eyes of a determined and dedicated family of dog agility trainers. A very well crafted movie about the subject. Dogsville is award-worthy for sure.

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We Fly, We Crawl, We Swim: A Short Film About Climate Justice - Romania

1/12/2021

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The search for justice is not an individual endeavor, it is a collective practice of world-making. Haunted by past extinctions, a human being starts wondering what climate justice might look like, what its faces may be, when other beings are involved in the questioning. A cat, and many other non-human animals become present and part of the process, sharing their experiences, and moving together towards multispecies justice. The questions the film poses are as real as you (or me) are.

Director - Aron Nor

Director Statement

I think one of our main goals was to ask how does the notion of climate justice translate into an anti-speciesist framework. How can we present some of the ideas found in environmental justice literature and political ecology, without being uncritical to anthropocentric notions? The main problem we ran into, of course, was the very humanistic framework on which “justice” relies, often lacking a critical understanding of humanism, anthropocentrism and speciesism. So, we wanted to center other animals, while still talking about climate justice and yet without ignoring other issues. It’s a hard task for our first short animated film, to say the least.

AniFab judge's aggregate score is 8.2 out of 10 with one judge noting that watching We Fly, We Crawl, We Swim: A Short Film About Climate Justice was, "mesmerizing, I was entranced."

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The Imaginary Kaleidoscope - Short - USA

1/12/2021

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“The Imaginary Kaleidoscope” is a series of close-ups of animal sculptures, small and large. The close-ups, which excise context from the frame, suggests portraiture. We encounter these animals at eye level and observe them looking at us. Even without context, lawn sculptures are recognizably mass-produced and made of inexpensive yet robust material intended to endure outside. The male voiceover reads a monologue quilted with quotations from the western canon in which the author ventriloquizes an animal voice (i.e. Kafka, Rilke, Bishop, Tolstoy). The video offers a meditation on voyeurism and the performative quality of public-facing private displays, and on the desire to reintegrate animals into our life. The yard art animal sculptures are dinky monuments to that desire for reintegration. I gathered the footage in small towns across the Northeast, Midwest, and the South suggesting a collective place-less portrait of Americana.

Director Masha Vlasova

AniFab judge's aggregate score for The imaginary Kaleidoscope was 6.2 out of 10 with one judge writing, "I really enjoyed this short movie. It is hard to imagine the concept of poetic intellect and discourse presented through lawn ornaments. It was almost trance like. This movie was meant to be presented by AniFab. We were made for each other."

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Samadhi: We Are One - Feature - Switzerland

1/12/2021

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7 Stories of true love and friendship between animal and human.

Tatiana Schneider and her wolf pack in Germany. Sholeh and Mulan the tiger in Indonesia. The orangutans of Borneo and their babysitters of the BOS Foundation. Stefanie Stöcker and and her two horses Björn and Menor in Germany. Fadjen the corrida bull and his savior Christophe in France. The enchantment of Herbert and his groundhog friend Moritz on the highest mountain of Austria.

Director - Victor J. Tognola

Animals will help man to become human.
There are no barriers , only ones that we have invented for ourselves and those ones that we will invent next. If we will ever survive.

AniFab judges scored Samadhi: We Are One a 9.1 out of 10 and when judge wrote, "This is a special movie. The world needs to see Samadhi: We Are One!"

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AniFab Official Selections

Dogsville - Feature - Canada

We Fly, We Crawl, We Swim: A Short Film About Climate Justice - Romania

The Imaginary Kaleidoscope - Short - USA

Samadhi: We Are One - Feature - Switzerland