French producer and distributor Studiocanal has unveiled the first clip from Michel Hazanavicius’ Cannes Competition movie, The Most Precious of Cargoes, which is also competing at the Annecy festival in June. The 2D-animated feature is based on an acclaimed novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg and centers on a Holocaust-surviving Jewish girl who is rescued by a woodcutter and his family after she is thrown from a moving train to Auschwitz.
The French-language film features the voices of Jean-Louis Trintignant, Grégory Gadebois, Denis Podalydedès and Dominque Blanc. Hazanavicius, who is best known for his 2011 five-time-Oscar-winning feature The Artist, co-wrote the script with Grumberg and also drew all the characters for the film. The score is by Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Shape of Water).
“It’s not a preachy movie, neither a film about the victims nor about the executioners. It’s about the people who saved lives,” Hazanvicius told Variety. “We see a beautiful chain of solidarity, of love that sets in motion to save the life of a little girl. You don’t cry because it’s sad, but because it’s beautiful,” said the filmmaker, who has been drawing since he was ten-years-old.
The movie is the first an animated feature is competing for the Palme d’Or in Cannes since Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir debuted at the festival in 2008. The film is produced by Patrick Sobelman and Robert Guédiguian (Ex Nihilo) and Florence Gastaud and Hazanavicius (Les Compagnons de Cinéma). The film will open the Annecy Festival of Animation on Sunday, June 9. Studiocanal will release the movie in France in November.
Watch the clip below:
Source: Variety
