The past is prologue in Michael Di Jiacomo's Animals, a lush romantic fable starring Tim Roth as a broken dreamer who finds new meaning in the pursuit of an elusive love (Mili Avital) after a trio of elderly French documentary filmmakers hijack his Checker cab to drive from New York to South Carolina.

The film starts with a 13-minute set piece, "The Tollkeeper", which finds the Frenchmen, led by Lothaire Bluteau, in the Utah desert in 1933 filming Mickey Rooney as a cranky tuba player manning a way station to nowhere. Back in present-day New York, Roth's driving a cab and contemplating suicide when the French doc crew appears again.

"When your dreams are shattered early on you either rebuild them in a different way or end up searching restlessly for that elusive sense of bliss," says Di Jiacomo. "The film is built to engage the audience and leave certain elements open to [individual] interpretation."

Di Jiacomo, 34, made an early splash when his NYU grad thesis film, The Lost Treasure of Captain Cornelius 'Deadeye' Tuckett, won an Academy Award for experimental work in the student division. Former Disney exec Gabrielle Tana produced Animals as a joint venture between Paris-based Pandora and the German investment group Hollywood Partners. Sundance provided a 35mm Panavision package.

Di Jiacomo shot the black-and-white "Tollkeeper" section in Utah last December before heading to South Carolina for principal photography on offshore Edisto Island where Roth finds redemption and the filmmakers faced a grueling shoot wrangling the pigs, sheep, birds, and dogs that fill the rural landscape. Di Jiacomo is editing in New York for a fall delivery and rights are available through Tana.

Cast: Tim Roth, Mili Avital, Rod Steiger, Mickey Rooney, John Turturro, Jacques Herlin, Lothaire Bluteau, Olan Jones. Crew: Producer, Gabrielle Tana; Line Producer, Richard Dooley; Screenwriter/ Director, Michael Di Jiacomo; Director of Photo-graphy, Alik Sakharov; Production Designer, Kalina Ivanov; Editor, David Leonard. Contact: Gabrielle Tana, Magnolia Mae, Inc., 244 West 11th Street, New York, NY 10014. Tel: (212) 366-5044, Fax: (212) 741-9679.

Animals - Michael Di Jiacomo
Highball - Noah Baumbach
Life During Wartime - Evan Dunsky
Long Time Since - Jay Anania
Montana - Jennifer Leitzes
Portrait-in-Progress - Marion Cajori
Some Prefer Cake - Heidi Arnesen
Sparkler - Darren Stein
A Stranger in the Kingdom - Jay Craven
Sue - Amos Kollek