Private Project

My Animal

Heather, an outcast teenage goalie, longs to play on the hockey team of her small northern town. She meets and falls in love with newcomer Jonny, an alluring but tormented figure skater. The girls’ relationship blossoms despite Heather’s struggles with her alcoholic mother, her hidden sexual orientation, and a familial curse that transforms her into a feral wolf under the full moon. Heather and Jonny’s secret tryst soon clashes against the conformity of their small community, exposing dangerous truths and igniting a passionate, violent night of personal transformation.

  • Jacqueline Castel
    Director
    The Puppet Man, Twelve Dark Noons, A Slice of A Dream
  • Jae Matthews
    Writer
    The Runner
  • Andrew Bronfman
    Producer
    The Void, The New Romantic
  • Michael Solomon
    Producer
    Castle In The Ground
  • Bobbi Salvör Menuez
    Key Cast
    "Heather"
    Adam, White Girl, Euphoria
  • Amandla Stenberg
    Key Cast
    "Jonny"
    The Hate U Give, As You Are, Bodies Bodies Bodies
  • Stephen McHattie
    Key Cast
    "Henry"
    A History of Violence, Secretary
  • Heidi von Palleske
    Key Cast
    "Patti"
    Dead Ringers
  • Cory Lipman
    Key Cast
    "Rick"
    Most Wanted
  • Scott Thompson
    Key Cast
    "Marcel"
    The Kids in the Hall
  • Dean McDermott
    Key Cast
    "Coach Dutch"
    Open Range
  • Joe Apollonio
    Key Cast
    "Otto"
    Berry, High Fidelity (Series)
  • Nate Bolotin
    Executive Producer
    Mandy, Yoga Hosers
  • Jonathan Bronfman
    Executive Producer
    The Witch, Patti Cake$
  • Bryn McCashin
    Director of Photography
    Omi (SXSW '22)
  • Marc Boucrot
    Editor
    Enter The Void, A Prayer Before Dawn
  • Augustus Muller
    Composer
    The Runner
  • Dean Hurley
    Sound Designer
    Twin Peaks: The Return, JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Genres:
    Coming of Age, Romance, Horror, LGBTQ+, Drama
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 43 minutes 4 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    2,440,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Arri Alexa
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.85:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Sundance Film Festival
    Park City, UT
    United States
    January 23, 2023
    World Premiere
  • Fantasia Film Festival
    Montreal, QC
    Canada
    August 1, 2023
    Canadian Premiere
Distribution Information
  • Photon Films
    Distributor
    Country: Canada
    Rights: All Rights
  • Paramount Pictures
    Distributor
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
  • XYZ Films
    Sales Agent
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
  • UTA
    Sales Agent
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Jacqueline Castel

JACQUELINE CASTEL is an internationally award-winning director, screenwriter, and curator based in NYC. As an artist, she explores the connection between occultism, surrealism, eroticism, and genre cinema in her storytelling.

Castel's work has been featured at more than fifty festivals worldwide, including Sundance, SXSW, Rotterdam, BAMcinemaFest, Sitges, and Fantasia. She has written for and directed cult auteurs John Carpenter and Jim Jarmusch, and collaborated on a film with David Lynch for his Festival of Disruption in 2018. Her most recent short film released in 2021 is a portrait of Cannes award-winning actor Caleb Landry Jones. Castel’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The BBC, NOWNESS, VICE, Italian Vogue, Interview Magazine, and on AMC's Shudder.

With the support of the Tate Britain in London, she is currently in production directing the feature documentary A MESSAGE FROM THE TEMPLE, about UK artist and ritual sex magick collective Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth, featuring British artist, musician, and cultural provocateur Genesis P-Orridge.

Castel is attached to direct French-Japanese erotic thriller EDGES OF THE FLESH from a script co-written by her and Sasha Grey, a feature which Castel will be directing in Tokyo. Her first feature screenplay, psychological horror film MIHARA, was the recipient of the Ivanhoe Pictures Award at the IFFAM Project Market in Macao, China in 2017 for its merit as an international co-production and is currently in development. In 2019 she began development on a series adaptation of OCCULT AMERICA, based on the acclaimed book by writer and historian Mitch Horowitz. Castel is currently in post-production on her first narrative feature, MY ANIMAL, from a screenplay written by Jae Matthews of the electronic duo Boy Harsher.

Castel was previously a co-director at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies in New York, and is a freelance programmer and artistic director for events, experiences, and screenings internationally, including most recently at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn and a multi-media presentation with British surrealist Penny Slinger at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. She has created live projections for engagements at the Guggenheim and MoMA P.S.1, and events for VICE and BOUND NYC. Her photography work has been showcased at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and as part of Tony Oursler’s Eclipse installation at the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain in Paris.

She earned her Film & TV BFA with Honors at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and did additional coursework in film programs at the Academy of Performing Arts FAMU in the Czech Republic and at CalArts in Southern California.

She is a triple citizen of Canada, the United States, and France.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

MY ANIMAL is a story about inheritance: of what gets passed through our lineage and how that defines us as individuals. It is also a story about first love and how that can serve as a catalyst for radical change, revealing what we most need and what most needs healing within us.

Like Heather, I understand the quiet despair and isolation of being raised in a dysfunctional family in a small town, and of rebelling against it in youth only to discover that the most treasured and distinctive aspects of my selfhood derive from the very things I attempted to reject. What made me an outsider also defined and ultimately transformed me.

In Jae Matthew's screenwriting, I found the pain and joy of our mirrored adolescent struggles, our complex family relations, and the difficulty of navigating our earliest and most formative relationships. The real battle we each waged in youth, and the one Heather’s character must also face, is finding the courage of self-acceptance and self-expression.

Through the struggles of these characters we encounter what works and what does not in the quest for identity, authenticity, and self-actualization, and the courage we must summon in the face of personal crisis and discrimination. This classical, outsider framework translates beautifully to the mythology of the werewolf.

In MY ANIMAL, I invite the viewer to get lost in the otherness of Heather Anderson. In so doing, I not only compel the audience to feel connected to a character who at first may appear to have little in common with them, but also to learn the same lessons that she does: only by embracing the traits that make us outcasts, and even subject to scorn, do we learn to become fully ourselves.