Animalia review – sci-fi in the most elusive manner

Itto (Oumaïma Barid) is alienated. After aseries of elegantly composed shots of ahouse’s opulent if empty interiors, she is shown in there but out of place. She goes to the kitchen to help the maids prepare dinner (“Like us, she sure is aBerber!” one of them comments), only to be regarded with contempt by Hajar (Souad Khouyi), who thinks it unbecoming for her new daughter-in-law to be mixing with the staff. Not only is Itto having to transition from her lowly Berber background (“a hick who’s nobody’s daughter”, as she herself puts it) to become part of this affluent, Francophone household, but, heavily pregnant, she is also going to be amother. She barely recognises herself.

All this seismic change in Itto’s life is about to assume an unexpected, apocalyptic form. Her husband, Amine (Mehdi Dehbi), and the rest of her new family drive to Khouribga for afunction, while Itto, not feeling up to the event, stays behind alone at their lakeside home. Then, strange, green-glowing storm clouds appear in the sky and the world irrevocably shifts.

Now everything is different. The military moves in, roads are closed, dogs and birds behave strangely, the markets crash. ​“Those lights in the sky remind me of the coup d’état in ​’72,” comments the neighbour’s stepmother (Rabha Zaki) – and there is indeed some kind of cosmic revolution taking place. Even as Itto must travel alone cross-country to rejoin her family, breaching the normal etiquettes expected of awoman, she will also cross back over the class divide as she gets alift with delivery man Fouad (Fouad Oughaou) and returns to her own tongue.

“Do you think there’s ameaning to all this?” Itto will ask, even as ateenage boy (Mohamed Lahbib), who joins her and Fouad, will suggest: ​“Like fish who don’t see the water they’re in, we’re immersed in something we don’t see either.” Viewers of Animalia will find themselves undergoing asimilar experience. For while in this road movie it is obvious where Itto is trying to go as she races to be reunited with afamily, her adventures become more peculiar and unpredictable, and the phenomenon at the centre of the film has surreal, mind-altering effects on those who venture into its mistycore.

This debut feature from co-writer/director Sofia Alaoui is amystery – enigmatic and abstract – that falls somewhere between the life-changing contacts of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and the overnight social upheavals of Michel Franco’s New Order (2020). This is sci-fi, but only in the most elusive manner, as the awe-inspiring event at its centre remains unknowable. Meanwhile, Itto’s desert odyssey exposes across-section of Moroccan society – and amid talk of aliens and interdimensional beings, Itto will reassess her relationship with herself, the baby inside her andGod.