Naked Animals

Lost in the German provinces and in search of stability, five young people find each other and live by their own rules. Katja, Sascha, Benni, Laila and Schöller: they run into each other, away from each other. They kiss each other, they hit each other. They love each other. Closeness and pain are one. But after this winter and the end of school, they will go their separate ways. NACKTE TIERE is a movie about the time when you could conquer the world. A time when you can eat punches without batting an eyelid because you know that someone is there to catch you. And about the pain of saying goodbye, of leaving it all behind. For something you don't even know yet. DIE ZEIT: "The spatial center of the film is a prefabricated apartment, it takes a while to see the house from the outside, but inside a cosmos unfolds that stands in contrast to the meaningless uniformity of the façade. A nest furnished with bulky waste, sparse and at the same time full of warmth, coming and going and hanging out, sleeping in changing constellations on mattresses and in sleeping bags. It is a home with its own rules, a family of choice. (...) The landscape of physical affection that the film maps is unusual and fascinating; as sparse as it is with the backgrounds and stories of its characters, it is just as eloquent in its forms of physical references. It is a language that cannot be easily understood. Blows are followed by hugs, wounds by doctoring, a playful wrestling that ends in a chokehold and fainting, a lick across the cheek as a morning greeting, a picking at scabs as care for the other. Dancing, together and alone. (...) Fion Mutt's camera captures all of this in a 6:5 format, whose tight ratios intensify the intimacy of the close-ups. It is a view that seems to come from the inside of a relationship rather than from the outside. Martial arts training, where the film's physical cinema begins and to which it returns again and again, is the only disciplined activity in Katja and Sascha's lives. The rules are clear and binding, and in the end it is clear what often remains unclear in life: who has won and who has lost."