NAKED ANIMALS
O.V. in German subtitled in Spanish and English
Winner of the best debut film award at the Berlinale. Naked Animals is a close encounter with five teenagers who live without adult supervision, at some point bringing flashbacks of The Lord of the Flies and Kids, this time a gray German provincial city. This is the last winter before the end of high school for Katja, Benni, Sascha, Laila and Schöller, living their life between karate classes, smoking joints in filthy apartments, wandering around with little emotional support apart from their group. They experience it together scrambled in a visceral and physical film, full of hand-to-hand fights, kisses and cuddling in a sea of ambiguous relationships. The threshold of an uncertain adult life.
Direction: Melanie Waelde
Script: Melanie Waelde
Cinematography: Fion Mutert
Editing: Jessica Schneller
Sound: Robert Fuhrmann
Cast: Marie Tragousti, Sammy Scheuritzel, Michelangelo Fortuzzi, Luna Schaller, Paul Michael Stiehler
Production: Anja Wedell, Thorne Mutert, Jan Fincke
Production Company: Czar Film
Melanie Waelde
Born in Dachau, Germany in 1992, she graduated with a degree in screenwriting from the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) in 2017. She works as a freelance writer and filmmaker, and her short films have screened at several festivals. Her short documentary, Like in Africa, won the Young German Filmmaker Award at the Up-and-Coming International Film Festival Hannover. Alongside her film work she also writes experimental short stories and poetry. Naked Animals, her feature-length debut, got a Special Mention in Berlinale.