THE MORNING LIST
This week viewers will be able to discover an animated film about the Shoah, The most valuable of assetsby Michel Hazanavicius; a fascinating cinematographic experience at the ZAD with direct actionby Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell; the dizzying portrait of a fool, diamond in the roughby Agathe Riedinger, in competition at Cannes; or the adventures of Béatrice Dalle in Italy, in the footsteps of Pasolini, in The Passion according to Béatriceby Fabrice du Welz.
You can’t miss it
“The most precious of possessions”: the Shoah from a child’s perspective
In this animated film, Michel Hazanavicius – the same one who invented the universal antidepressant Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, hero of OSS 117 – adapts the book of the same name by Jean-Claude Grumberg, published by Seuil in 2019: the story of a little girl thrown from a train and taken in by a couple of poor lumberjacks. The title of the work, which spins Nazi newspeak like a glove: “commodity” designated the Jews destined for the industry of death −, is quite illuminating about his spirit. Here, there are no Jews or Nazis, we speak the language of history, which evokes “cursed race” or the “train gods”.
Faithful to the spirit and letter of the text, the film is not just that. He transubstantiates it in the world of animation, with all the necessary sobriety, sensitivity and talent. Instead of embroidering the refined narrative of the story, Hazanavicius has the intelligence to work on the motif. The Polish forest, dark, disturbing, wintry and yet saving. The train, like a blind, howling beast that keeps crossing it and destroying the world, screaming. The extermination camp, an elective site of human disfigurement against the backdrop of a transfigured Yiddish lullaby. J.Ma.
Animated film by Michel Hazanavicius (1h21). With the voices of Jean-Louis Trintignant, Dominique Blanc, Denis Podalydès, Grégory Gadebois.
“Direct Action”: plastic work in the ZAD
The area to be defended (ZAD) of Notre-Dame-des-Landes (Loire-Atlantique), in fixed plans and in 16 millimeters: the documentary direct action is a fascinating cinematic experience, capturing the daily life of Zadists and the experimentation of modes of production consistent with environmental struggles. American Ben Russell and Frenchman Guillaume Cailleau filmed between 2022 and 2023, after the airport project was abandoned in 2018. They show a little-known part of this territory, where men and women work the land, gain autonomy… So many activities that could not have existed if the airport had been built. On camera, Ben Russell captures stunning images of the anti-megawatershed protest march in March 2023.
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