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• Film Info
• Awards & Press

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Becoming Animal
​Directors: Peter Mettler and Emma Davie
Run time: 79 min
Release Date: 11-30-2021 | SRP: $24.95 | CAT#: PRDVD4644 | UPC: 602573829929
​Genres: Documentary, Animals

​Synopsis: ​A subversive nature film in which we pique our senses to witness the so-called natural world – which in turn witnesses us.

​Long Synopsis: An inspired collaboration between filmmakers Peter Mettler (The End of Time) and Emma Davie (I Am Breathing) and radical ecologist and geophilosopher David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous), Becoming Animal is an urgent and immersive audiovisual quest, forging a path into the places where humans and other animals meet, where we pry open our senses to witness the so-called natural world-which in turn witnesses us, prompting us to reflect on the very essence of what it means to inhabit our animal bodies.

Shot in and around the Teton Mountains, with their dizzying diversity of wildlife, trails of curious humans in RV's, and billion-year-old geology, the film is a geyser of provocative ideas and heightened sensations related to the sublime circuitry that connects us to our ever-shifting surroundings. A snail's body becomes an immense landscape as the soundscape immerses us in shivering leaves, rushing rivers and the weird spacey pitch of elk bugling at night. Becoming Animal embraces the sensory tools of cinema to trace how the written word and technology has affected how we see.

Driven by wonder, curiosity and a desire for a saner balance between ecological realities and technological impulses, Becoming Animal is an invitation to explore our relationship with this "more-than-human world" and recognize it for what it is: an inexhaustibly mysterious realm wherein everything is alive and expressive, where humans, animals and landscapes are inextricably interdependent, and there is no such thing as empty space.

Awards & Press:

AWARDS:
Best Feature Nominee, CPH:DOX 2018
Fugas Feature Film Competition Nominee, Documenta Madrid 2018
Grand Prix Nominee, Docs Against Gravity 2018
Best Feature Nominee, Bildrausch Filmfest, Basel 2018
Best Feature Documentary Nominee, Edinburgh International Film Festival 2018
FilmFest Munchen 2018

PRESS:
"...full of effervescent life,"
- POV Magazine

"Mesmerising and immersive...the film’s thesis actually comes across as perceptive and rather profound."
- Steven Neish, HeyUGuys.com

"Becoming Animal is mind-expanding: in it, we perceive not only the nature shown differently, but also ourselves."
- Thomas Bodmer, Züritipp

"Peter Mettler's pictures are already so much further than the thinking reaches."
- Johannes Binotto, Filmbulletin

"Becoming Animal is a Gesamtkunstwerk: an essay film, a picture and sound collage, a philosophy seminar, a humorous film about filmmaking—all together."
- Brigitte Häring, SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen

Passion River Films 2020