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Bac Films has scooped up Hélène Merlin’s feature debut “Cassandre,” with the Gallic outfit set to launch international sales at next week’s Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris.

Set in a rural idyll during the summer of 1998, the coming-of-age drama casts rising star Billie Blain (“The Animal Kingdom”) opposite screen stalwart Zabou Breitman (“The New Look”), following an adolescent girl as she forges a new sense of self post-puberty.

“In the family’s small manor, her parents and older brother notice that her body has changed,” reads the description. “Fortunately, Cassandre is passionate about horses, and she joins a small riding center for the holidays, where she’s embraced as an odd but endearing character. Here, she discovers a different kind of normal, one that gradually frees her from the family dynamic that threatens to engulf her…”

“We are thrilled to have taken on Hélène Merlin’s debut,” says Bac Films’ Vincent Llobell.

As far as high concepts scenarios go, Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom has been blessed with a primo what-if premise: France is in the middle of a pandemic. (No, not that one.) A good deal of the population has been stricken with what doctors and scientists have been calling a “mutation.” Whether it’s a natural evolution or some sort of devolution caused by man-made factors is anyone’s guess. But the symptoms are basically a slow, steady transformation into …an animal.

It could be a bird, like the...

“The Animal Kingdom” is a new ‘mutant’ science fiction thriller, directed by Thomas Cailley, starring Romain Duris, Paul Kircher, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Tom Mercier, Billie Blain, Nathalie Richard, Saadia Bentaieb, Gabriel Caballero, Iliana Khelifa, and Paul Muguruza, releasing March 15, 2024 in theaters:

“..immerse into an extraordinary world where mutations in human genetics cause people to transform into hybrid creatures, as ‘François’ does everything he can to save his wife, who is affected by this mysterious condition.

“As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, François embarks with ‘Emile’, their 16-year-old son, on a quest to find her with help from a local police officer…”

Cluck the images to enlarge…...

Two years after a mysterious malady began to sweep through France, humans continue to mutate into other animal species. Hybrid creatures who aren’t sitting in rehabilitation clinics that are really detention centers roam the streets and countryside. And while there are humans who are paranoid about the malady, pleading for members of their communities to keep each other safe, much of society has adjusted just fine to this strange new reality.

If Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom sounds like a sociopolitical allegory for a certain pandemic, that’s more an accident of timing than of intention, as the film, which was co-written by Cailley and Pauline Munier, was conceived before Covid-19 was even known to us. In fact, The Animal Kingdom is an allegory for many different ideas, from race relations to coming into one’s queerness. And while its genre hybridity is apt given its premise, in...

“The Animal Kingdom” is a new science fiction thriller, directed by Thomas Cailley, starring Romain Duris, Paul Kircher, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Tom Mercier, Billie Blain, Nathalie Richard, Saadia Bentaieb, Gabriel Caballero, Iliana Khelifa, and Paul Muguruza, releasing March 15, 2024 in theaters:

“..immerse into an extraordinary world where mutations in human genetics cause people to transform into hybrid creatures, as ‘François’ does everything he can to save his wife, who is affected by this mysterious condition.

“As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, François embarks with ‘Emile’, their 16-year-old son, on a quest to find her with help from a local police officer…”

Cluck the images to enlarge…...

While the world was grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic, French director Thomas Cailley was imagining another kind of coronavirus, one he’d cooked up before the crisis, but which suddenly took on new real-world relevance. In “The Animal Kingdom,” a mysterious malady is sweeping France, unlocking something at a genetic level that causes people to transform into hybrid creatures. The mutations are slow and somewhat unpredictable: One person might sprout feathers, observing over weeks as their arms develop into wings, while another grows scales and winds up slithering like a snake.

Through it all, 16-year-old Émile (Paul Kircher) and his father, François (Romain Duris), are just trying to stay calm, which isn’t easy when something akin to a zombie apocalypse has left the entire country jittery and suspicious. What’s causing the mutations? Is it contagious? Can the creatures be trusted, or are they a threat to others? A scar on Émile’s cheek,...