42/10
In wartime, a poor lumberjack and his wife live in a large forest. One day, the woman finds and rescues a little girl, bringing irrevocable change to the lives of the couple and those whose paths the child will cross. This is Michel Hazanavicius's first animated film. This is the best 2024 release I’ve seen so far this year, and we’re in the middle of December 2024. It tells a story that takes place in Poland during World War II, almost like a folktale. Most of the action takes place in the forest, so typical of the aforementioned folktales, revolving around a couple of lumberjacks who adopt a Jewish girl who was thrown off a deportation train that passed through their forest. She was abandoned by her father 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. On the technical side, everything is also done perfectly. The visuals of the film are wonderfully done. The drawing style is dark, not too detailed or too rough, mostly showing scenes in low light with dominant shades of gray, thus emphasizing the horrors of the most infamous war and mass extermination phenomena in the history of humanity. And then the soundtrack that is sublime: Musical score, sound effects, narration and voice acting (I saw the original version in French), all completely appropriate to present this gem of a film. In conclusion, it is one of the best films that deal with the theme of racism, and in particular the Shoah, through its artistic approach and the story it wants to tell.