The Crossing
La Traversée
Florence Miailhe / France, Germany, Czech Republic / 2021 / 80 min / French
A plundered village, a fleeing family, and two stray children on the road of exile: Kyona and Adriel are trying to escape from their pursuers and reach some more welcoming country. During their initiatory trip from childhood to adolescence, they will have to cross an entire continent obsessed with hunting down migrants, and to go through many trials, both real and surreal, in order to discover a New World, free at last!
Directed by: Florence Miailhe, Written by: Marie Desplechin, Florence Miailhe, Artistic director: Youri Tcherenkov, Animation: Valentine Delqueux, Marie Juin, David Martin, Aurore Peuffier, Anita Brüvere, Ewa Łuczkow, Paola de Sousa, Aline Helmcke, Urte Zintler, Ewa Łuczkow, Lucie Sunková, Polina Kazak, Eva Skurská, Anna Paděrová, Zuzana Studená, Marta Szymanska, Editing: Julie Dupré, Nassim Gordji Tehrani, Music: Philipp E. Kümpel, Voices: Emilie Lan Dürr, Florence Miailhe, Maxime Gemin, Arthur Perreira, Serge Avedikian, Axel Auriant, Jocelyne Desverchère, Marc Brunet, Production director: Marcela Vrátilová, Producers: Dora Benousilio, Luc Camilli, Olivier Père, Martin Vandas, Production: Les Films de l’Arlequin, Balance Film, Maur Film, XBO Films, Distribution: Indie Sales
IMDb
This film owes its existence to my longing to tell the story of my own family, my grandparents having come to France with their children in the early 1990s. Their fate enabled me and my scriptwriter Marie Desplechin to voice the subject of immigration, which is again becoming the focus of world attention.
Our memories and indeed our lives often originate in the painful stories of immigrants who had once arrived in our country. We would like to present them in a feature length animated film that would expressively capture the nature of such experience. The result would be based not only on the memories of our direct ancestors, but also on collective memory, people’s dreams, historical tales, and old legends.
- Florence Miailhe
The Crossing is told through the memories of an old woman: after all those years Kyona narrates what happened a long time ago when she was still a child. The commentary voice-over technique is especially suitable for an animated movie. It gives the film a unifying element, continuity, it bridges narrative ellipses. What’s more, it emphasises the magic and subjective character of the painting without losing us in the plot.