Guided by Animals

From the spirit guides of Native American lore to Alice and her white rabbit, the animal as chaperone, as escort to unimagined secret realms and adventure—or much more sinister discoveries—has a long and rich history that, naturally, extends to its role in cinema around the world, the subject of this zoological menagerie of a series. A sunglasses-wearing feline in Vojtěch Jasný’s The Cassandra Cat, a beatific donkey in Robert Bresson’s Au hazard Balthazar, a joyriding catbus in Hayo Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, and a rather ill-omened beached whale in Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies—these are just a few of the specimens you’ll encounter in Guided by Animals, whose lineup brings together films both family friendly and decidedly adult, fanciful folklore and grim fairy tales, and all creatures great and small.