Les Bêtes
Michael Granberry
11 min | United States
A mysterious rabbit with a set of magic keys summons a host of strange creatures to entertain a wicked king and his decadent court in this dark stop-motion animated fantasy inspired by the works of Ladislas Starevich.
A four-year labor of love begun in 2020 as a “pandemic lockdown project” and completed in 2024, “Les Bêtes” was conceived to be a zero-budget, entirely recycled film in the style of a 1930’s Ladislas Starevich animation. Even the stop-motion characters, all of which were originally constructed for other projects that never materialized, were repurposed after rotting away in storage for almost two decades.