Writer-director Maya Gray’s psychological horror short ANIMALS. will make its international premiere at the Raindance Film Festival in London later this month, bringing a deeply unsettling portrait of coercive control and forced occupation to the fest’s acclaimed Shorts Programme.
ANIMALS. follows Zoya (Serine Sianosian), a grieving woman who, still reeling from her mother’s death, reluctantly opens her door to Amelia (Rachel Alig), a mysterious stranger who claims to have rented the house through Airbnb. What begins as an uneasy one-night arrangement spirals into a harrowing power struggle as Amelia refuses to leave and the dynamic between the two women grows increasingly manipulative and brutal. The film uses this claustrophobic premise to interrogate themes of grief, colonisation, dehumanisation, and the bystander effect — asking audiences to examine how we normalize atrocity when it happens at a distance.
Gray cites Rod Serling and Sam Esmail as key influences, and lists The Twilight Zone as the work that first made her want to make films. That lineage is evident in ANIMALS., which weaponizes the mundane horror of home-invasion dread to make its social arguments land hard. The film is produced by Michael Jasper (LaNaMA Films).
“The film is not meant to point fingers but to give people a chance to reflect on the ways in which they ignore the ugly of the world and what that leads to,” said Maya Gray, writer-director.
ANIMALS. screens at Raindance Film Festival in the Shorts Programme: Gone Astray on June 25, 2026 at 10:15am. Tickets and more information are available at raindance.eventive.org.
