17/13
This is Michel Hazanavicius' first animated film
Chronology
In war-torn times, a poor woodcutter and his wife live in a great forest. One day, the woman finds and rescues a baby girl, bringing irrevocable change to the lives of the couple, and those whose paths the child will cross..
It tells a story happening in Poland during WWII, almost like a popular tale
This is the best 2024 release I’ve seen this year so far and we’re in the middle of December 2024. Most of the plot happens in a forest, so typical for the aforementioned popular tales, turning around a pair of woodcutters adopting a Jewish baby girl who has been thrown off a deportation train crossing their forest.
On the technical side everything is done perfectly too
She was thrown off by her father to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I won’t go further into details of the plot so you can see them by yourself, I just want to add the film will come to a deeply philosophical conclusion.
The movie’s visuals are outstandingly done
The drawing style is just right, not too detailed nor too rough, mostly showing scenes in weak lighting with dominating shades of gray, thus underlining the horrors of the most infamous war and occurrence of mass extermination in human history. And then the soundtrack which is sublime: The musical score, the sound effects, the narration and the voice acting (I saw the original version in French), all totally appropriate to present this gem of a film.
