Animals

Brahim is a young man who hides from his family that he is gay. At his mother’s birthday gathering the tension around who he is becomes impossible to carry; he leaves the house into the night and there meets four men. The film starts from the story of Ihsane Jarfi, who was killed in the Belgian city of Liege in 2012; that killing became the first homophobic attack recognised as a hate crime under the country’s law. Nabil Ben Yadir made the film with the consent of the murdered man’s father. The attack is not dressed up and the audience is given no relief; the men who did it are shown not as monsters but as ordinary men. The ninety one minute Belgian production was released in 2022.