The Crossing is an
animated film that mixes family memory and contemporary dramas to follow,
between imagination and reality, the chaotic journey of two migrant children.
اضافة اعلان
In the village of a
country subjected to a dictatorial regime, a family chooses exile. Quickly, the
two eldest children, Kyona and Adriel, are on their own and will have to
overcome many obstacles.
The film, directed
by Florence Miailhe, will be screened on Friday at the Royal Film Commission as
part of the
Amman International Film Festival.
By drawing on the
history of her own family (her great-grandparents having fled Odessa then her
mother having lived through the exodus of 1940), Miailhe could have made an
animated documentary a bit like Marjane Satrapi with her autobiographical
“Persepolis”. Miailhe made another choice that paid off. By opting for a story
closer to a fantastic tale, she makes her story universal and timeless.
Fabulously creative in her approach to animation painting, Miailhe designs a very successful film for all audiences in the poignant epic of two young migrants.
The Crossing,
co-written with writer Marie Desplechin, resonates with all the tragedies of
exile, whether past, current, or future.
Refusing to anchor
her story in real places and in a specific time, Miailhe is inspired by real
situations (also incorporating drawings by her mother, the artist and
resistance fighter Mireille Miailhe), but the filmmaker mixes them with tales
and myths from various backgrounds, which has the effect of talking about and
to everyone.
For example, we will
recognize the influence of “Hansel and Gretel” or “Tom Thumb”, typical
characters such as
Baba Yaga, or ogres, or even symbolic figures such as crows.
The Crossing is
poetic in tone, but also in form, the director exploiting an unusual technique
(at least in feature films): animated painting. This style, which leaves room
for instinct and chance in its implementation, gives a Chagallian soul to this
film and helps to make it memorable.
Darkness and fantasy
intertwine in this magnificent story which, although stamped “Young audience”
by the AFCAE, still risks being too difficult to read.
Fabulously creative in her approach to animation painting, Miailhe designs a very successful film for all audiences on the poignant epic of two young migrants.
Fabulously creative in her approach to animation painting, Miailhe designs a very successful film for all audiences in the poignant epic of two young migrants.
Wonderfully staged
with its palette of moving colors and a multitude of subtle ideas brought to
life with enormous grace, The Crossing is a simple and profound, sophisticated
and clear film, combining a humanist spirit with a gaze that does not turn away
from the dark sides of beings.
A debut feature of
high artistic value not to be missed (and to be shown to children) that Miailhe
dedicated to her “grandmother who, one day in 1905, left Odessa with her ten
children to flee the pogroms” and to “all those who one day or another leave
their country hoping to find a better future elsewhere”.
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