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Animalz
Special Recognition Storytelling
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Animalz

Simone Bocchino, Luca Ontino · Italy
Storytelling
Subcategory Drama
AI Software Kling, Runway, Hailuo, Freepik, Vidu AI, Hedra Labs

“Animalz” is a 10-minute cinematic short film set in a parallel world where animals have become the dominant species and humans are hunted, imprisoned, and processed. The story follows a father whose wife and daughter are captured by anthropomorphic tiger soldiers. 
He escapes into the forest, haunted by flashbacks, and joins a hidden human group to launch a final, desperate attempt to reach the city and save his family. 
What he finds is a disturbing mirror of our own society. 
Told through poetic visuals, minimal dialogue, and striking emotional moments, the film blurs the lines between roles of predator and prey, asking what truly defines a civilization.


"Animalz" was born from a single, haunting question: What if we were in their place? From that spark, a world unfolded, not of fantasy, but of inverted truth. A world where animals wear the uniforms of power, and humans are the ones behind cages, fences, and factory walls. This film is not a lecture. It is not a protest banner. It’s a mirror. Through emotional allegory and poetic imagery, Animalz asks audiences to feel what logic often fails to convey, the violence of normalization, the cost of comfort, and the fragility of our moral framework. The story is deeply personal. As filmmakers, we weren’t interested in crafting spectacle, but in building a visceral experience, one that lingers in the chest. The father’s journey through fear, memory, and resistance reflects not only our empathy for animals but also our growing disquiet with systems that reduce life to commodities. Every shot, every silence, every gaze was designed to speak without shouting, to ache without manipulation. Technically, Animalz is also a statement of intent. It was made without a traditional set, crew, or camera. Instead, we embraced AI not as a gimmick but as a tool, a lens through which we could render our vision with precision and intimacy. From cinematography and sound to character emotion and pacing, every element was authored by us, then shaped through AI as our extended instrument. But make no mistake: AI did not tell this story. We did. The emotions, themes, and arcs are human. The love between father and daughter, the horror of seeing celebration mask cruelty, the loneliness of resistance, these are ours. AI was simply our way of bending time, cost, and resources to make something that otherwise might have stayed on the page. "Animalz" is a film about empathy, but also about power, systems, and the stories we tell to justify our place at the top. If by the end you feel a crack in that story, if you see our world from a slightly different angle, then we’ve done our job.

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