Filming ended on 1 June in Venaria, in Piedmont, for the first fiction work by Alessandro Pugno, an international co-production titled Human/Animal bringing together Italy, Spain and Mexico. The film is produced by Spain's Pecado Films, and First Draft (José Alba), Daniele Segre and Daniele De Cicco of Torino-based company Redibis Film and Una Comunión La Película (Mexico).

Already behind several documentaries (among them All’ombra della croce, winner for the award for Best Documentary at the Malaga Film Festival in 2013, and Playgrounds of Lead [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]), the Piedmontese director wrote, with Natacha Kucic, the screenplay of his first fiction feature film (finalist at the Premio Solinas Storie per il Cinema in 2015), which centres on the parallel stories of Matteo, an Italian child who dreams of becoming a bullfighter, and Fandango, a calf born in Andalusia. 

A calf has just been born in the sunny prairies of Andalusia. In a village shrouded in the fog of the Po Valley, the young son of a funeral home director dreams of becoming a bullfighter. Fandango and Matteo grow up in very different worlds, yet their lives are mirrored in each other. Both will leave childhood to become adolescents and then adults, experiencing the same joys and growing pains. Only at the end will the two meet in the arena, in front of hundreds of people.

A modern western, Human/Animal is described by its director as “a philosophical film where beauty walks in step with tragedy, where bullfighting becomes a cruel and true metaphor for life and where human life is seamlessly intertwined with animal life.”

The Italian cast includes Ian Caffo, in the role of the young Matteo; Silvia Degrandi, as the mother Cristina; Paola Sotgiu, as the grandmother Carla. In the Spanish cast, we find Guillermo Bedward, in the role of a “grown up” Matteo, Antonio Estrada (maestro), Antonio Dechent, Brontis Jodorowsky. 

Filming in Spain took place between November and April, in Seville. The Italian production started shooting Piedmont in January, starting from the area of Alessandria – at Casale Monferrato, where the film is set – to then continue through Torino and its surroundings.

The project benefited from the minority co-production fund of the Italian Cultural Ministry, the development support fund of the  Torino Piemonte Film Commission and the contribution of the Piemonte Film TV Fund; the film is also supported by Eurimages, Ibermedia, ICAA - Ministerio de Cultura de España and Junta de Andalucía.