An outcast hockey player, Heather (Bobbi Salvor Menuez) is saddled with baggage heavier than her goalie pads: not only is she a closeted lesbian living with her alcoholic mom, but she’s also inherited a familial curse that transforms her into a bloodthirsty lycanthrope. Falling for Jonny (Amandla Stenberg), a figure skater nursing her own emotional wounds, Heather invites further persecution from the prejudiced townsfolk. But turn around is feral play, and there’s a full moon rising.
From its transfixing opening transformation sequence, Jacqueline Castel’s My Animal is a full-blooded creature feature that weds the classic werewolf mythos with its own sapphic sensibility. Likewise, it leans into some genre tropes (including a synth score in the key of Carpenter), while exploring new avenues of the uncanny (let it be said: LSD and lycanthropy don’t mix). Ultimately, it’s an anthem of self-actualization and an ode to outcasts, whatever form they take.
September 30 & October 2: Q&A with director Jacqueline Castel & crew
Series Media Partner
Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Amandla Stenberg, Stephen McHattie, Heidi von Palleske, Cory Lipman, Scott Thompson
Canada
2023
Altered States
English
Sexual Discrimination
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Andrew Bronfman, Michael Solomon
Screenwriter
Jae Matthews
Cinematography
Bryn McCashin
Editor
Marc Boucrot & Jacqueline Castel
Production Design
Emma Doyle
Original Music
Pier Harrison
Director
Jacqueline Castel
Jacqueline Castel is an internationally award-winning director, screenwriter, and curator based in NYC. Her short film work has been featured at more than fifty festivals worldwide, including Sundance, SXSW, Rotterdam, BAMcinemaFest, Sitges, and Fantasia. She has written for and directed cult auteurs John Carpenter and Jim Jarmusch, and collaborated on a film with David Lynch for his Festival of Disruption in 2018. Castel’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The BBC, Dazed, VICE, Italian Vogue, Interview Magazine, and on AMC’s Shudder. She earned her BFA with honors at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. My Animal is her feature film debut.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Turner & Constable
Filmed as a supplement to a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Britain happening right now, this doc in the popular Exhibition on Screen series allows us to view these competitive, complementary English landscape artists side by side.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
One of only a handful of live action children's films to capture the imaginations of generations, E.T. has a luminous warmth; it's a suburban symphony of emotion, and it's fascinating to revisit it in the light of The Fabelmans.
The President's Cake
Nine year old Lamia and her friend Saeed venture into the city to scrounge ingredients for a cake to celebrate Sadaam Hussein's birthday — a quest fraught with real peril in precarious times. Winner, Camera d'Or, Cannes.
Antonia's Line
This month's Pantheon selection spotlights the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Dutch feminist filmmaker Marleen Gorris, and her charming, vibrant tale of an emancipated farmer who refuses to conform.