Lost in the German provinces and in search of stability, five young people find each other and live by their own rules. Katja, Sascha, Benni, Laila and Schöller: they run into each other, away from each other. They kiss each other, they hit each other. They love each other. Closeness and pain are one. But after this winter and the end of school, they will go their separate ways. The debut film NACKTE TIERE (Naked Animals), with which director Melanie Waelde was invited to the Berlinale’s “Encounters” section, is a film about a time when one could conquer the world. A time when one can take a punch without batting an eye, because one knows there is someone there to catch you. And about the pain of saying goodbye, of leaving all that behind. For something you don’t even know yet. “Everything is fluid in the almost documentary-style sequences, played by confident young actors, which don’t tell a story in the traditional sense, but rather describe a powerful yet fragile liminal state through daring, often very bizarre ellipses. – Worth seeing” (Lexikon des Internationalen Films)