Animali Domestici

2025 | Italy | Antonio Casanegra | Short | 15' | In development

Limbo Film, Daitona, Pantafana Film |

In a remote countryside, two children experience a defining moment in their lives: for the first time, they take part in the ritual slaughter of a pig. What begins as a day like any other soon turns into an initiation into the inevitability of death and the end of innocence.

The film seamlessly weaves together fiction and archival footage, juxtaposing the boys’ carefree childhood memories with the stark reality of their present. Through the grainy images of a past recorded on tape, we see them playing, laughing, and existing in a world untouched by the weight of knowledge. These fragments of their former selves are accessed through a VHS menu screen, an omnipresent interface that dictates which memories are revisited. The act of rewinding, pausing, and selecting scenes becomes an invisible narrative force, as if an unseen observer is guiding the story, choosing which aspects of the past should be relived.

Without dialogue, the film relies on hauntingly visceral imagery and sound design to convey the emotions of the moment. The pig’s slaughter, though never fully explicit, permeates the air with a heavy inevitability. The children's faces—shifting from curiosity to unease to an unspoken understanding—become the canvas for their transformation. It is in this silent exchange, in the quiet acceptance of the act, that they symbolically step out of childhood.

Animali Domestici is a deeply nostalgic and symbolic meditation on the loss of innocence. It explores the power of memory, the way technology mediates our recollection of the past, and how a single experience can mark the transition between childhood and adulthood. With its dreamlike aesthetic and deliberate pacing, the film lingers in the space between past and present, urging the viewer to confront their own moments of irreversible change.