There are in Michel Leclerc’s films – The Names of the People, Télé Gaucho, The Class Struggle – a quest for identity that does not hide the autobiographical aspects. In the documentary Penguin & Gull and their 500 cubs, the director gives the keys to his personal story. During World War II, Michel Leclerc’s mother was separated from her parents, Jews, deported to Auschwitz, from where they will not return.
“Over time, you can accept that one component of your identity may disappear and another may appear.”
Michel leclercto franceinfo
Michel Leclerc’s mother is saved by a heroic couple, Roger and Yvonne Hagnauer, who opened in 1941, in Sèvres, an orphanage which hid dozens of Jewish children. Nicknamed “Penguin and Goéland”, this duo of humanist anars with revolutionary pedagogical methods for the time, deceives the Vichy regime which finances their place and they offer to all these victims of the war an elective, joyful, united and alert family through culture.
Archive images, testimonies of survivors of the time, the film traces the making of an identity and questions our present, often stuck in the question of identity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=957FcrQ1x4I
In Albatross of Xavier Beauvois, there is Normandy, where he lives, the cliffs of Étretat, a breeder strangled by debts and his friend, gendarme, Jérémie Renier, who wants to help him, but who will commit the irreparable. Snapshot of a suffering rural world, Albatross unfolds its plot before setting sail.
“The sea is undoubtedly the last space of freedom.”
Xavier Beauvoisto franceinfo
The last part of the film is a beautiful and poignant escapade at sea, when this gendarme sets sail, alone on a small boat, to escape the tragedy he was unable to avoid. For these humid and bright scenes, Xavier Beauvois thought a lot about the great navigator Bernard Moitessier.
He is apart, like a daron of French cinema, he surprises us and amazes us once again, so we say it once again, yes, The Olympics by Jacques Audiard is the movie to watch right now.
“I wanted to make the next film, that of social reconciliation.”
Jacques Audiardto franceinfo
Shot in the district with the very graphic views of the Olympiads in the multicultural 13th arrondissement of Paris, in black and white, this contemporary marivaudage sublimates tumultuous life courses, friendship, love, sex, doubts about professional choices , Audiard choreographs a mixed and virtuoso cast. And we like his optimism, his confidence in today’s youth.