The feature film ‘Animal’, in the climate change section, competes at the 66th Seminci for the Green Spike Award

The Fundos Hall in Fuente Dorada hosted the presentation of the film Animal this Friday, 29th October 2021. Programmed in the Climate Change section, the session was attended by French director, Cyril Dion. The documentary will compete for the Green Spike, a prize that rewards the environmental values at the 66th edition of Seminci.

Animal is a film that revolves around the relationship we humans have with the rest of living species. “What I was looking for was to understand why species disappear. There is climate change, but there is also the extinction of species, and very little is said about it,” director Cyril Dion told the audience in the auditorium. 

The film tells the story of 16-year-old Bella and Vipulan, who belong to a generation convinced that their future is threatened. Fifty years from now, their world could become uninhabitable. No matter how much they are alerted by the situation, nothing changes, so they decide to get to the source of the problem: our relationship with the living world. “Gradually the project changed as I met young people who were demonstrating against climate change in Europe,” he added. “I realised that there was a generation of 16-year-olds who were aware that they had no future,” admitted Dion.

In the course of an extraordinary journey, the young people will understand that we are deeply connected to other species. And that by saving them, we will be able to save ourselves as well. “The film is on the one hand a geographical journey, but also an intimate one. A journey to understand how their generation could have a future,” he concluded. 

Cyril Dion was born in France and studied drama and had a brief career as an actor. Together with director and farmer Pierre Rabhi, he founded the Colibris movement, an ecological association that fights for energy transition and environmental protection. His works include Imago and ‘Petit manuel de résistance contemporaine’. The film Animal premiered at the last Cannes Film Festival, and in addition to being screened at major events, it is making a tour of many small festivals around the world, in around 30 countries.