Ai Weiwei Production

2025, 122 min
by Weiwei Ai

2025CPH:DOXAi Weiwei examines our relationship with animals, from China and Egypt to the Danish mink farms. At times violent, always thought-provoking - and above all, a mirror image of ourselves.In China, men in uniforms kill street dogs with long sticks and turn donkeys into candy. In Myanmar, elephants drag heavy logs through the jungle, but soon there is not enough work for the many working elephants. In Egypt, they tie the camels’ legs together to make them behave. In the Lofoten Islands, they fish and fillet fish in a hurry. In Brazil, a rancher dreams of more cattle, even though most of the deforestation in the Amazon is caused by agriculture. In Indonesia, they hunt whales with harpoons. In Mongolia, tourists can have their picture taken with a wolf. And in Denmark, mink are kept in small cages until one day during the covid pandemic, the Prime Minister calls for them all to be killed. Without judgment, artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei takes us around the globe in a reflection on our multifaceted relationship with the world’s animals. Observant and calm and without judgment, ‘Animality’ paints a sometimes violent but always thought-provoking picture of our collective relationship with the rest of the living world.