40/47
In times of war, a poor woodcutter and his wife live in a large forest. One day, the woman finds and saves a little girl, causing an irrevocable change in the lives of the couple and those whose paths will cross with the girl. This is Michel Hazanavicius’ first animated film. This is the best 2024 release I’ve seen so far this year and we’re halfway through December 2024. It tells a story set in Poland during World War II, almost like a folk tale. Most of the plot takes place in a forest, so typical of the folk tales mentioned above, and revolves around a couple of woodcutters who adopt a Jewish girl who was thrown off a deportation train passing through their forest. Her father threw her to the ground to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I won’t go into the details of the plot so you can see for yourself, I just want to add that the film will come to a deeply philosophical conclusion. Even from a technical point of view, everything is done perfectly. The visual aspects of the film are exceptionally crafted. The drawing style is perfect, neither too detailed nor too rough, it mainly shows low-light scenes with dominant shades of grey, thus emphasizing the horrors of the most infamous war and mass extermination event in human history. And then the soundtrack, which is sublime: the soundtrack, the sound effects, the narration and the dubbing (I saw the original French version), all absolutely appropriate to present this gem of a film. In conclusion, it is one of the best films dealing with the subject of racism and in particular the Shoah, for its artistic procedure and the story it wants to tell.