33/26
In war-torn times, a poor woodcutter and his wife live in a vast forest. One day, the woman finds and saves a girl, bringing an irreversible change to the lives of the couple and those who cross the child… This is Michelle Hazanavicius’ first animated film.. This is the best 2024 release I’ve seen so far this year and we are in mid-December 2024. It is a story set in Poland during World War II, like a folktale. Most of the plot takes place in a forest typical of the aforementioned folktales, and tells how a Jewish girl who was thrown off a deportation train through their forest is adopted by two woodcutters. She was thrown away by her father to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I won’t go into the details of the story, so you can see them for yourself, I just want to add that the film will come to a deep philosophical conclusion. On the technical side, everything is done perfectly. The visuals of the film are exceptionally well done. The style of the drawing is very accurate, not too detailed or too harsh, with mostly low-light scenes showing a dominant grayscale, thus emphasizing the horror of the most infamous war and genocide in human history. Then there is the great soundtrack: the musical score, the sound effects, the narration and the voice acting (I saw the original in French) are all very suitable to present this gem of a film. In conclusion, this is one of the best films that deals with the subject of racism and the Shoah in particular, both for its artistic procedure and the story it wants to tell.