Nous revenons à nos moutons: Regarding Animals in Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep

Although Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977) unfolds an exceptionally generative critique of the connections between animal death and human life, the film has yet to receive attention from overlapping circles in film studies and animal studies. This article argues that the film’s distinctive engagement with a constellation of boundaries—between sound and image, waking and dreaming life, human and animal—works to loosen the visual field and to make room for an ethical recognition of the complex relationships implicated in the practice of animal slaughter.