45/40

During the war, a poor woodcutter and his wife live in a large forest. Once a woman finds and rescues a girl, which brings irreversible changes in the life of the couple and those whose paths cross with the child. This is the first animated film by Michel Khazanavichus. This is the best 2024 release I’ve seen this year, and it’s mid-December 2024. It tells a story that takes place in Poland during the Second World War, almost like in a popular fairy tale. Most of the plot takes place in the forest, which is so typical of the above-mentioned popular fairy tales, revolving around a couple of lumberjacks who adopt a Jewish girl who was thrown from a deportation train crossing their forest. Her father dumped her to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I will not go into the details of the plot so that you can see them for yourself, I just want to add that the film will come to a deeply philosophical conclusion. From the technical side, everything is done perfectly. The visual effects of the film are done in an outstanding manner. The drawing style is just right, not too detailed and not too rough, mostly showing walls in low light with dominant shades of gray, thereby emphasizing the horrors of the most shameful war and cases of mass extermination in human history. And then the soundtrack, which is sublime: musical accompaniment, sound effects, narration and voiceover (I saw the original version in French), everything fully corresponds to the presentation of this gem of a film. In conclusion, this is one of the best films that deals with the topic of racism and, in particular, the Shoah, in terms of its artistic procedure and the story it wants to tell.