Special envoy to Annecy
Four uninterrupted minutes of "standing ovation" in the large Bonlieu room, this is a rare event at the heart of the Annecy festival.
However, this is what happened after the preview screening
of Florence Miailhe's
first feature film
La Traversée
.
To read also: The animation cinema, first of the roped party in Annecy
Everything is a little out of the ordinary with this first animated film which has been biding its time for fourteen years. Designed on a glass plate, this method of painting animated directly under the camera is quite rare these days in the world of animation. The great films that showcase this technique, which is as artisanal as it is poetic, often come from short films such as
La Rue
(1976) directed by the Canadian Caroline Leaf, or
The Old Man and the Sea
(1999) by Russian director Alexandre Petrov.
With short films like
Au first Sunday in August
(2000) or
Conte de quartier
(2006), Florence Miailhe has also shown that she is a great director of the genre.
For her,
"this animated painting technique on glass leaves room for a certain intuition, and allows her to set the painting in motion."
The heroine, Kyona is passionate about drawing.
She will draw her entire journey while trying to protect her little brother Adriel.
© Gebeka films 2021.
La Traversée
features a fleeing family and two children lost on the roads of exile.
After witnessing the fire in their village, the family of young Kyona (who will draw her entire journey) leaves.
Soon separated from their parents, Kyona and her little brother Adriel will try to escape all those who stalk them to join a country with a more lenient regime.
During an initiatory journey that will take them from childhood to adolescence, they will go through many trials, both fantastic, and very real to reach their destination ... freedom.
On the stage of the Bonlieu room, the producer Marc Bonny of Gebeka Films insisted that
"the screening of
La Traversée
in Annecy was absolutely crucial in the life of the film."
The idea of making a fairy tale on migration in animation on glass plate was born in the head of Florence Miailhe about fifteen years ago, when her husband, Patrick Zachmann, photographer at the Magnum agency , returns with overwhelming clichés on migrations in the islands of Lampedusa, or in Malta ...
Kyona and her little brother Adriel will try to escape all those who stalk them to reach a country with a more lenient regime.
Gebeka films 2021.
The screenplay for
La Traversée,
co-written with novelist Marie Desplechin, was born out of Florence Miailhe's own family history.
“My grandmother left Odessa in 1905, driven out by the pogroms
,” says the director.
She will arrive rue des Rosiers, in Paris, with her ten children. ”
But the film borrows allegorical paths and the writing of fairy tales.
This allows the artist-director to link this family history rooted in immigration at the beginning of the 20th century with those of current migrations.
“Marie Desplechin and I share a taste for storytelling,”
explains Florence Miailhe.
This is what guided us throughout the writing and making of this film.
"
La Traversée
is dedicated to “Mireille Glodeck Miailhe, who made her passion for painting her profession.
And to the director's grandmother, who one day in 1905 left Odessa with her ten children to flee the pogroms. "
Gebeka films 2021.
At the sight of the reactions of the public, who gathered at the exit of the projection room, evoking
"a great emotion"
, a
"sublime film
" or even a "
masterpiece"
, one can only be enthusiastic about the idea that it could finally be released in theaters on September 29.
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