Sheep, which won the Student Award for Best Short-form Series at Canneseries (see the news), is about… sheep. They think they have domesticated humans – until they’re forced to fight them. Created by Alex Reinberg and Leni Gruber, and produced by Horse&Fruits Filmproduktion, the show is a co-commission by broadcasters ZDF and ORF.

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Cineuropa: It’s been a while since we've seen anyone use animals like this – it’s very Babe. What made you want to go there?
Leni Gruber: A few years ago, this would have cost much more money than it does now. The animals are all real, but tasks like animating the mouth could be done with AI, which was a big help. It’s our first big project; we’re coming straight from the Film Academy Vienna and making a series about sheep.

Alex Reinberg: For us, it was all about the idea. We didn’t really consider whether it was feasible or even doable. When we pitched the idea, they told us they thought we were pulling their leg. We thought they were crazy for saying yes to it [laughs]. “Okay, so now they’re going to cancel it and tell us to do something else with our lives.” But they never did!

Was it easier to make it into a series than a film? People say nobody’s taking any risks any more, and it’s always about an alcoholic detective solving a murder in a small town. And then you show up.
LG: We worked with a special team at ZDF. They focus on younger people and were also behind Maren Ade’s feature debut. They gave us all this freedom, which is so rare.

AR: Until recently, it was the only place where you could really experiment and try different things. It’s such a gift for young filmmakers who are still trying to find their feet in their craft. We were incredibly lucky.

You mentioned AI – could you talk about that a little? One reason why these animal-centred projects stopped was perhaps because of accusations of animal cruelty.
LG: We had a lot of shooting days with the sheep. It was really important to be able to feel the animal, so we only used AI for the mouth animation.

AR: It was a new thing for us because, well, we were used to shooting with humans. When working with animals, you have to adapt to their way of being. They won’t do anything they don’t want to do. Our animal trainer, Katja, is also a vet. You can see that she really loves her animals. We had lengthy conversations about how to approach certain scenes and what was, and wasn’t, doable. Animal safety and well-being were always our primary concern.

The humour in the show is very specific – these animals talk as if they’ve been through therapy. It’s all very adult.
LG: This contrast really interested us. When you watch BoJack Horseman, it’s an animation – but it’s aimed at adults. It explores many of the questions we ask ourselves.

AR: It was important to take their struggles seriously. When I was a kid, I spent one summer on a farm, feeding little lambs. When I returned the next year, we were eating meat, and I asked: “How are the little lambs doing?” All of the grown-ups went silent. I realised: "Oh my God, that’s where the meat comes from." It really hit me. There was nothing nice or funny about it. When we wrote Sheep, we wanted to show the existential dilemmas these characters were going through. They’re fighting for their lives, and for the lives of their families, friends and this whole community.

“Existential” is a bit of a keyword here. You even end with a song that rather brutally says: “We are just meat.”
LG: We tell their stories, but we also talk about humans. Having animal protagonists provides some useful distance.

AR: And we also wonder: what can an animal feel? What is its existence like? What is its life experience like? The next generation will probably think about it much more than we did, or than our parents or grandparents did. When you spend a lot of time with these sheep, you realise they all have their own personalities. You can’t talk to them, but you see they’re very unique in their way of being: their moods, the way they act or relate to you. Some of them always wanted to be around. They wanted that closeness.

You are emerging creators: as such, wouldn’t it be easier to get a gig on a popular crime show? Instead of testing the waters, you took the plunge.
LG: We want to have a bigger audience, sure, but we also want to tell stories that are important to us. We had a chance to be brave and make something new, so we seized it.

AR: Perhaps we were a little naïve in thinking that if an idea really hooked us, we should follow it. But we also found a way to do it! As we said, we never thought someone would actually allow us to make this show – and I also don’t think we’d be well suited to writing a crime show. There are people who can do that much better than us; we might be the people who do crazy sheep shows.

Your show is obviously insane. But after a while, you forget about it. You just follow the story and the adventure.
AR: We knew we had a really crazy idea, so we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel in terms of how we told the story. We have a clear protagonist and a clear conflict. He’s a selfish sheep at the beginning, and he goes on this journey to realise he’s part of a bigger community. And he likes it! This story has been told many times – we are just using different tools.

LG: That’s what we told our voice actors, too: “Be as realistic as you want.”

AR: The whole thing is already so absurd. You try to counteract that by keeping the way they speak more naturalistic.

It brought to mind Animal Farm or Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story.
LG: When you’re already working with sheep, you can play with these references a bit more.

AR: In a later episode, there’s a full sequence referencing The Blair Witch Project. The protagonist is filming himself with a digicam, and he’s lost in the woods. You couldn’t really do that with a human. But when a sheep does it, it’s fun and bizarre, and you’re along for the ride.

We all saw Babe when we were young. In these films, the conflict between animals and humans was never central. But in real life, that’s what it’s all about. It felt like there might be a niche in that universe we could still explore and make feel fresh.

And, since you have sheep, it’s easier to talk about the meaning of life. It doesn’t sound so corny.
AR: We really enjoyed that during the writing process because you can throw the kitchen sink at it without it being too much. When we work with humans, we like subtlety. But you can’t be too subtle when you’re working with real sheep.