Logline

WHAT ARE WE? HUMANS? OR ANIMALS? OR SAVAGES?

Synopsis

Two women live together, confined to a house with a dog, a parrot, a rat, a fish and other animals. With them, we explore a distorted world, where reality is put to the test. Family hierarchies generate a competitive relationship between the two women, which turns into a power game. A story on the verge of cannibalism, raising issues such as the collapse of moral boundaries when confronted by the insatiable human thirst for power.

Director’s Statement

Mammalia is a 15-minute experimental film. Two women, Mavra and Antonia, live together in an eccentric house, governed by a distorted sense of reality. They each follow their own specific rules, they compete against each other and they consume their animal companions (dogs, parrots, mice) in an attempt to possess their animal spirits, or at the very least, win a prize for their new skills. This tenuous equilibrium is shattered when Mavra hunts Antonia’s favorite pet. Growing up with a surgeon father and pharmacist mother, both of whom love their professions, from an early age became familiar and curious about biology, anatomy, death and blood, and developed a profound respect for all living organisms. Questions like what happens if you open up the human body, what does the inside of the brain look like or why do cats have tails have puzzled me since | was a child. This film juxtaposes these early questions with contemporary problems, such as the over-consumption of animal meat, animal abuse, power structures, social cannibalism, dynamics among women and the concept of confinement. The constructed reality of this film, serves as a commentary on speciesism and anthropocentrism, the failure of a harmonious co-existence between humans and nature, the dynamics of co-habitation, violence and power. In various tribes and civilizations, animals are considered to possess supernatural powers. Why does the “civilized” Western human overconsume animal meat, keep “exotic” animals in captivity and dominate pets that she considers her property? The hyper-realistic setting and the unorthodox observation of “nature” in a small urban house, will allow me to explore the archetypal animal-human relationship, and effectively, the relationship among humans in the post-modern consumerist era.
Elia Kalogianni