CANNES 2024 - remote notes

[Chris Knipp]

THE MOST PRECIOUS OF CARGOES (Michel Hazanavicius)

SHORT FILM CLIP

In Competition. (Original French title "La plus précieuse des marchandises.") An animated feature that follows the fate of a Jewish baby thrown from the window of a death-camp train and rescued from the snow by a poor lumberjack and his wife who live in a deep Polish forest. They are childless and adopt the baby. As noted in the intro to this thread, this is the first animated feature in Cannes Competition since Ari Folman's 2008 WALTZ WITH BASHIR. It is adopted from Jean-Claude Grumberg's bestselling novel about the Holocaust and WWII and has a score by Alexandre Desplat and is voiced by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant with Grégory Gadebois, Dominique Blanc and Denis Podalydès. With Rasoulof's SACRED FIG, it was a late addition to Cannes Competition (hence its scheduling at the end). Hazavincius has said "It's about people who saved lives." In his VARIETY review Peter Debruge says the film, "blending the heavy lines of early-20th-century woodcuts with the gentle pastels of watercolor painting," finds a "poignant way to address not only the horrors of the Holocaust, but the kinds of kindness that combatted it. Hazanavincius has crafted "an indelible parable destined to be watched and shared by generations to come." Debruge contrasts this "gut" approach to the Holocaust with the "abstract intellectual" one of Glazer's ZONE OF INTEREST. The Dardenne brothers are among the producers. This went right to the bottom of the SCREEN DAILY jury grid. The last Competition feature shown at the 2024 Cannes Festival.