Born in 1998, he lives and works in Paris. With a background as an audiovisual technician, he went on to study at the Cergy art school and then at the Beaux-Arts de Paris. He works with new technologies, in particular 3D, and focuses on how they offer him new ways of creating images. The themes of his work are drawn from his personal history including childhood memories, things he has seen and experienced, and difficulties in communicating.
What was your starting point for “Les animaux vont mieux”?
The idea for this film came to me during a residency at La Peyrigne, in the south of France, where I had the opportunity to explore the ruined basement of a church and discover a kind of statues cemetery. Immediately, I envisioned a film set and pictured a community of animals living there. I didn’t write a script, but since the theme of this residency was „gleaning,“ I began by searching the internet for 3D models of animals. I started creating images even before having a story. The visual atmosphere of the church basement drove the narrative. I then worked on writing the story through monologue lines for the animals, which turned out to be highly autobiographical. Animals reminded me a lot about my childhood, when I was always hanging out with my cats, and it awakened a need to talk about certain memories. Throughout a year of working alone on this film, I added different branches, scenes, and narrative arcs as I went along. Working alone before finishing the film with a crew provided ample room for imagination and experimentation.
Do you have a favorite moment in the film? Which one and why this one?
I have a few moments, the very first shot in one of my favorites, it’s the first shot I’ve made back in summer 2022, and it drove the whole film atmosphere. At that time I had no idea what the film would be, I had just found a 3D model of a cat doing this weird circle animation, it felt like a ritual. In the end we changed the cat model but I asked Margaux Kempff, the animator, to recreate the same movement. I also really like when the fox watches the car video, a person who used to be very important in my life filmed it for me when I had just started making the film. We can hear her voice a little under the wind, so this moment has a really special place in my heart.
What do you like about the short form?
It’s great for experimenting and testing ideas, especially in animation, a project of this nature in a long form would have taken me at least five to ten years. Having a really small budget (6000 euros) was also kind of a chance in a way, I couldn’t go through the usual way of making 3D animated films with a whole studio, where you validate every part of the script, animated storyboard, animatic, before doing lighting and seeing your film. Here, I was able to create each shot from start to finish each time I had an idea. I had a rough cut of the film from mid-2022, with lighting, very basic sound and animations that kept and kept evolving, the version you’re seeing now is the 42nd version of the film. When Margaux Kempff started working on the animation (creating the movements of the animals), she had already seen the film, the only difference were my bad “pre-animations” instead of the ones she created. This whole way of making this film made me able to experiment a lot, delete shots I didn’t like, add whole scenes pretty late in the production, go back and forth between choices, camera angles, lighting setups … I was totally free in my creative process, the only cost was time, and doing that in a long form would have been a way too long, costly and intensive process.
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PRESS REVIEWS
„Set in the disused basement of a church that gives off a Tarkovsky-esque vibe, with stagnant pools of water and flickering lights caught in slow camera pans, Nathan Ghali lets us into this mysterious inner world of animals, their thoughts captured via text projected on the wall. Featuring impressive handmade 3D-modelled creations made in Blender, this odd yet poignant French film reflects back onto the human world, with the animals explaining their memories of living with humans and brushes with morality, before a slow, enigmatic turn to poetic wordlessness.“
review by Redmond Bacon for Directos Note
„A raccoon sifting through a mountain of energy drinks, affirms that he hates humans, who see him as a pest. The raccoon vows to take revenge and later on sets fire to an abandoned car with Molotov cocktails.“
Review by Isabel Roy and Verena Nees for World Socialist Web Site
„This curiously echoes another short from the Berlin selection Animals Are Better by Nathan Ghali (France), where a mysterious community of animals has decided to live in self-sufficiency in the basement of a church. Here too, the animals‘ language is preserved and translated by subtitling, offering a new perspective of language to the viewer.“
mention by Amel Argoud for format court
„It in every sense defines a scenario of decay and decay, relics and ruins, all man-made. The animal characters fear and despise people, knowing that their future looks like the stuffed corpses in the natural history museum. „
review by Lida Bach for moviebreak
„Animation, Dokumentation und Installation verschwimmen im Keller einer Kirche zu Einblicken in ein ungewöhnliches Milieu. Zentrum diese sind Tiere, die durch die Dunkelheit tappen, dösen, sich erinnern, grübeln und trauern.“
review by Paul Seidel for Riecks Filmkritiken
„The French short film “Lick a Wound” also uses 3D animations, which are hardly recognizable as such due to their realism. With an extremely high degree of realism, the film shows animals struggling through the waste and remnants of human civilization and uses projections to share their thoughts with the audience. The director Nathan Ghali managed to create a touching, beautiful film that is equally fascinating in its style and narrative style. „
mention in german by Doreen Kaltenecker for Testkammer
„And on home viewing, the litany of CGI cats in the French Lick a Wound (Nathan Ghali, 2024) received a full five stars from my cat, who is normally not a cinephile.“
mention by Fedor Tot for Journey into Cinema
„Less anthropomorphic (aside from our protagonists’ inner dialogues being placed on screen as subtitles) is the animation Lick a Wound by Nathan Ghali (France), in which a group of animals, now separated from humanity, ruminate on the nature of their relationships with their former owners. Also utilising a realistic aesthetic, this is a tellingly dark examination of abuse and regret, all set within a dystopian world. „
mention by Laurence Boyce for Cineuropa
„Les animaux vont mieux (Lick a Wound), Nathan Ghali (France) A mysterious community of animals has chosen to live self-sufficiently in the basement of a church. Sheltered from humans, they engage in various rituals.“
mention in Cartoon Brew
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ETC.
reactions on letterboxd
Berlinale Shorts 