

The inmates drew their nightmares. Laloux animated them. You won't sleep right.
A slow and ugly fairy tale based on the drawings of inmates at a psychiatric clinic where LaLoux worked.
Direction
Laloux's first film. Already a master of uncomfortable.

Director
René Laloux
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made at Saint-Alban psychiatric hospital, where artistic expression was actual therapy—this wasn't exploitation, it was collaboration.
Those 'monkeys' are clearly human patients; the teeth-pulling mirrors real 1960s psychiatric practices. The grotesque is documentary.