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“Penguin & Gull and their 500 cubs”, in theaters Wednesday, traces the story of a couple who, during World War II, had created a school to save Jewish children.
It is the story of a couple of resistance fighters who have been accused of being collaborators, people of integrity in an era that was not. In 1941, in the midst of the Occupation, the Hagnauers, nicknamed Penguin and Goéland, founded a school, the Maison de Sèvres, to clandestinely house children without families. After the war orphans, they quickly take in Jewish children. Hiding Jews back then was a courageous act. A resistance that the director Michel Leclerc decided to tell 80 years later in the documentary Penguin & Gull and their 500 cubs, in theaters Wednesday, November 3.
Her mother, Juliette, was saved by the couple. Michel Leclerc then searched the past, found family photos, and immersed himself in the history of these foster children. “A lot of them there, as adults, had their own archives, lots of photos and amateur films. As we worked on the documentary, I got a lot of archives.”, he explains. At the Liberation, the Maison de Sèvres became an extraordinary school. “There was this idea of breaking away from the national education system of the time, of making children into obedient beings”, underlines the director.