The Most Precious of Cargoes
Animation film by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) about a lumberjack and his wife who take care of a baby thrown from a deportation train by her father during World War II in an attempt to save the little girl.
Once upon a time, a poor woodcutter and his wife lived in a great forest. Cold, hunger, poverty and a war raging all around them meant their lives were extremely hard. One day, the woodcutter’s wife rescues a baby. A baby girl thrown from one of the many trains that constantly pass through the forest.
This baby, this ‘most precious of cargoes,’ will transform the lives of the poor woodcutter’s wife and her husband, as well as those whose paths the child will cross – including the man who threw her from the train. And some will try to protect her, whatever the cost. Their story will reveal the worst and the best in the hearts of men.
Michel Hazanavicius unveiled his first-ever animation film in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is an adaptation of the best-selling book by acclaimed French playwright and children’s books author Jean-Claude Grumberg. The director, whose own family fled the Nazis in Eastern Europe, has given the film a classic look. For this, he sought inspiration in early Disney movies, Russian paintings, and Japanese prints.