A story about children who survived in the forest, based on a true story. Tender brotherly feelings and family secrets in this movie starring Mathieu Kassovitz and Yvan Attal.
Paris in the 1980s. Michel is a successful architect, husband, and father. While finishing a big project, he is told that his brother Patrice has gone missing. Putting his job and his relationship with his wife and children at risk, Michel flies to northern Canada, where his brother is hiding in a cabin. Michel feels that something is wrong and does not want to return without Patrice.
This is not the first time the brothers have found themselves isolated deep in the woods. In 1948, at the age of five and seven, abandoned by their mother and frightened by the consequences of a careless act that the boys kept secret for decades, they ran away to the forest and spent seven years surviving in the wilderness. They poisoned themselves with wild berries and thus learnt what they shouldn’t eat, ate worms and raw meat, washed in the river, and built a house of twigs and rags from the dump. They adjusted to their new life and were ready to accept it forever, so as not to be separated. So, when the adult Patrice, struggling with guilt and the secrets of the past, runs away to the woods again, Michel follows him.
Their childhood experience brought the brothers close together and changed them forever. Although they do not discuss it with others, they recall their life in the forest hut as a lost paradise. The forest in their memories appears to be a safe place: the laws of nature, though harsh, are intuitively clear, and the blurred edges of the frame show the children’s life in the forest as if inside a nest.
In this story about children who have been left to fend for themselves for years in postwar France (the end credits show that the story of Patrice and Michel, though unique, is not the only one of its kind), director Olivier Casas presents nature in the spirit of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Nature protects and nurtures the children, while human civilization is coping with yet another humanitarian crisis.
The film will be screened in French with Russian subtitles.
Brothers
Director: Olivier Casas
France, 2024. 105 min. 18+