The Animalman

A strange smell of manure, cold smoke and decay fills the air. In a draughty 17th-century farmhouse high above South Tyrol’s Ridnaun Valley, seventy-year-old mountain farmer Ernst lives as his ancestors did – sleeping in straw, cooking over an open fire, surrounded by countless cats and relics of a bygone world. But modernity is closing in. His old house, the heart of his existence, is threatened with demolition. What will become of his animals, his way of life, his philosophies? A film about the struggle between modernity and tradition, about the tragedy of a transition that cannot take place, and the passing of a remnant of a world long gone – upon which we cast one brief, affectionate glance.