If you should never work with animals or children, what about insects? Watching the interviews on this critter-doc re-release proves that insect-wrangling for movies is a massive labour of love. Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou’s account of a day in the life of a French meadow’s little folk required a special ‘filming robot’ camera. But the wayward ‘stars’ couldn’t always be relied upon and doubles had to be used whenever the stroppy insects decided to run (or fly) away. It’s little wonder the film took three years to make…

Still, the time invested pays off. Microcosmos’ cast is a scuttling symphony of small matter. Squishy snail-mating and mosquito-hatching provide spectacles every bit as freaky as Cloverfield’s calamitous beasties. Prize finds? The majestic empusid mantis and the sacred scarab, a bruiser beetle whose rolling of a dung ball becomes a task of Sisyphean effort.

The DVD extras aren’t comparable in scale but they do lay the directors’ passions on the table. Nuridsany and Perennou argue that the film wasn’t intended as an educational piece, but a “magical keyhole on to another world” that’s suffused with wonder. Anthropomorphising tendencies aside, the sense of awe does suck you in. And if you’ve had a hard week, you can watch reassured that an ant’s work is never done.

DVD Extras:

Interview with directors
Making Of Featurette