My Animal
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“My Techniques Are Intuitive”: Editors Marc Boucrot and Jacqueline Castel on My Animal
Lycanthropy serves as a metaphor for burgeoning queer desire in My Animal from director Jacqueline Castel. Heather (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) is a benchwarmer on her local hockey team and deals with an alcoholic mother at home. Adding to her misery is the fact that she’s confined to her quarters during each full moon due to a dangerous transformation occurring within her. She finally finds a salve in Jonny (Amandla Stenberg), a figure skater who recently moved to town. Desperate to flee from her myriad problems, Heather hopes that Jonny will join her on the journey to society’s outskirts. Edited by […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 4, 2023 -
“It Was -30 to -40 Degrees Celsius for Most of the Shoot”: DP Bryn McCashin on My Animal
Heather (Bobbi Salvör Menuez), a hockey player with a troubled home life, becomes instantly drawn to figure skater Jonny (Amandla Stenberg) who’s just rolled into town. Despite being held captive in her own house during each full moon, Heather yearns to escape and have Jonny by her side. Teeming with queer sensuality and lust-fueled lycanthropy, director Jacqueline Castel’s My Animal injects originality into a classic monster mythology. DP Bryn McCashin tells Filmmaker about lensing the film, which entailed frigid night shoots in Northern Ontario, Canada. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 4, 2023 -
“It Cost Us Nearly a Quarter of Our Budget To Be Shut Down for Two Weeks” | Jacqueline Castel, My Animal
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? My Animal was not an easy shoot—we shot nights in the dead of winter in an isolated community in Northern Ontario. While there were a lot of challenges, the biggest and most obvious crisis we faced as a team was a COVID shutdown that resulted in a two week suspension of the shoot. This was what I had feared the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 4, 2023 -
Sundance 2023: 5 Seasons of Revolution, My Animal, Selected Shorts, The Tuba Thieves and Milisuthando
Before it started, one question about this year’s Sundance concerned attendance: what happens when a more-expensive-to-attend-than-most festival, held in a cold place during winter’s peak at a high altitude, offers the option to stream the bulk of its titles online days later? Brand presence on Main Street appeared to be down (one out of five awnings rather than every single one), and P&I attendance seemed to be as well—but, for many there, the answer was jamming out endless viewings on their tablet or laptop between venturing out for select IRL screenings. Whatever those combined, not-yet-disclosed industry-plus-public streaming numbers were, they […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 27, 2023
