Take One Press

In 2019, I walked into a World Cinema class expecting to learn about film.

I didn’t expect a movie about four college students attempting to steal rare books from a university library to fundamentally change how I viewed storytelling.

Yet that’s exactly what American Animals did.

Directed by Bart Layton, the 2018 independent crime drama tells the unbelievable true story of four young men who become convinced they can pull off one of the most audacious art thefts in American history. On paper, it sounds like the setup for a traditional heist film. In execution, it becomes something entirely different.

Part documentary, part drama, and part meditation on memory itself, American Animals refuses to fit neatly into a single genre.

What struck me most when I first watched it wasn’t the crime.

It was the uncertainty.

Layton blends interviews with the real people involved alongside dramatic recreations, creating a fascinating tension between what happened and what people remember happening. Characters disagree with their own memories. Real-life participants challenge scenes being shown on screen. The film constantly asks whether we can ever truly trust our recollections of the past.

For a college student just beginning to discover world cinema and independent filmmaking, it was unlike anything I had seen before.

Up until that point, many of the films I watched followed familiar formulas. American Animals felt different. It showed me that film didn’t have to provide easy answers. It could be messy. Contradictory. Uncomfortable.

It could trust the audience.

The performances from the ensemble cast, including Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, and Jared Abrahamson, bring an authenticity that makes the film’s gradual descent into obsession and poor decision-making feel painfully real. Rather than portraying master criminals, the film presents young people chasing an idea they barely understand, blinded by ambition and convinced they are the exception to the rule.

That honesty is what continues to resonate years later.

Rewatching American Animals today, I’m reminded not only of how innovative the film remains but of where I was when I first encountered it. Sitting in a college classroom in 2019, I was beginning to realize that movies could be more than entertainment. They could challenge perspective. They could experiment with form. They could leave questions unanswered and still feel complete.

In many ways, American Animals arrived at exactly the right time in my life.

It wasn’t the first great film I ever watched, but it may have been the first film that made me actively seek out more independent cinema. It opened a door to filmmakers willing to take risks and tell stories in unconventional ways.

Years later, that curiosity remains.

And every time I revisit American Animals, I’m reminded of where it started.