Michel Hazanavicius returns to Cannes
As first reported by Varietytwo new films have been announced in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. First, the new film by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, The seed of the sacred fig tree. For the moment, the scenario and casting are unknown. This film will mark the director’s return to the Croisette, 7 years later A man of integrity – presented and awarded in the Un certain aware section -, a film that led to the confiscation of his passport by the Iranian regime and therefore the impossibility of travelling. Then, the new film by Michel Hazanavicius, The most precious of possessionsabout which we know much more.
The director at home
Michel Hazanavicius has been a regular participant at the Cannes Film Festival since it was selected in competition The artist in 2011. After this immense critical success, all of his subsequent films, with the exception of The forgotten prince – were presented at the prestigious festival. Research (2014) e The fearsome (2017) both in competition, e Cut! Out of competition but opening film of the Festival in 2022. It is therefore in familiar territory that Michel Hazanavicius arrives, but with something new: his first purely animated film.
The most precious of possessions is the adaptation of the 2019 novel of the same name by Jean-Claude Grumberg, a French writer whose father and grandparents were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. Michel Hazanavicius, originally, he didn’t want to evoke the Shoah in cinema, but the narrative form of Jean-Claude Grumberg’s novel pushed him to accept the project proposed by producer Patrick Sobelman. Here is its synopsis:
A Jewish family, two parents and their newborn twins, are arrested in Paris and deported. On the train that takes them to Auschwitz, the father throws one of his children off the train in the hope of saving him from death. While he sees the train passing by which he believes to be a freight train, a Polish woodcutter sees this “little goods” fall in the snow: she will welcome and raise this child as her son.
It’s a great recognition for animated cinema, which doesn’t often appear in Cannes competition. In fact, we have to go back to 2008 with Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman to find an animated film in competition on the Croisette.
Emotion in the program
With its topic and the form applied to it, there is no doubt The most precious of possessions it should deeply touch hearts and minds. Additionally, it will also be an opportunity to remember and give back a new tribute to Jean-Louis Trintignantwho lent his voice to the film’s narrator before his death in June 2022. The film’s voice cast also consists of Dominique Blanc, Denis Podalydès and Grégory Gadebois.
Source: Cine Serie
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