A megalith rises from a sandy desert – or rather, a scale model of such a landscape. “I am the archive”, says a young female voice while ominous string music nails viewers to their seats. This opening sets the stage for the narrative and figurative language of Rithy Panh’s dense mnemonic essay which uses stunning dioramas to tell a twenty-first century dystopian story. After a century of genocidal ideologies and destructive speciesism, animals have enslaved humans and taken over the world. In a wave of hope, the statues of the past have been removed but new ones are being erected to suppr...