With Kingdom of Animal, the directing duo Ashley Sabin and David Redmon ('Girl Model', CPH:DOX 2011 and 'Downeast', which is screening in the EMPIRE sidebar) give us a liberatingly raw take on the special subgenre of one-take films. Equipped with a steadicam, Redmon walks around in a fish factory in Maine and observes the work in progress on thousands of sardines, which are constantly thrown onto assembly lines. Along the way, a very special relationship arises with the working men and women in overalls and bathing caps, which have enough energy to flirt away over the cleaning of crab claws! Where, for example the director Aleksander Sokurov's groundbreaking 'Russian Ark' was planned right down to the smallest detail, the momentum in Kingdom relies solely on the factory workers' schedules, which contributes to the film's far more prosaic, edgy style. Shortly after filming the company closed down, and the films remains today as a kind of 'American Ark': a requiem for a doomed fish factory and an elegy of the United States in financial difficulties.

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