This film plays on the much-loved Creature Comforts format and uses real interviews of people’s experiences of temporary lockdown to tell the stories of wild animals forced to live under lock and key forever.

In the film we see caged, wild animals in awful conditions talking to camera about their experience of captivity. As they talk, we slowly start to empathise with their feelings because they were shared by all of us who were locked down for the very first time. But these voices are genuine unscripted interviews from people during lockdown. They perfectly match the characters we see on screen making us believe that this is what these helpless animals must really feel.

At the end we’re hit with the realisation that for us, lockdown was temporary, but for some wild animals, it’s for life.

Creature Comforts was an Oscar winning animated short film and famous TV series created in the UK and later in the US. It used real interviews with ordinary people and synced them with animated animals to create funny, entertaining films. By creating Creature Discomforts with the original animation studios, we were able to subvert the title but use the same construct to create a film with a powerful and emotional message during an unprecedented lockdown.

During the peak of lockdown in the UK, most people experienced being locked up against their will for the very first time. We wanted to use that experience to make people feel empathy towards millions of wild animals in captivity. And bring this important issue that seems a world away, a lot closer to home.