La Plus Précieuse des Marchandises | The Most Precious of Cargoes: dir Michel Hazanavicius (2024)

This moving animated feature was deservedly selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The story centres on a woodcutter and his family; they find a small girl in the forest who has been thrown from a moving train. The train is heading to Auschwitz, and she was thrown to some kind of safety by her father … The film is adapted from a 2019 novel by French author and playwright Jean-Claude Grumberg, about which one reviewer said: “It is difficult … to write a work of fiction about the Holocaust that is original; even simply in this sense, Grumberg’s work succeeds where many have failed”. Much the same applies to the film. Recommended.

In French with English subtitles. AF members pay AED 25.