The Most Precious of Cargoes (Michel Hazanavicius, 2024)

The Most Precious of Cargoes is a lovely, dark and deep animated feature by Michel Hazanavicius, who adapted the short novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg.

Narrated by Jean-Louis Trintignant shortly before he died, the movie is about the horrors of World War II, but it’s also the story of a little Jewish baby who gets a second chance after being thrown of a train, by her father no less, on its way to Auschwitz.

It’s also about a poor woodcutter (voiced byGrégory Gadebois) and his wife (Dominique Blanc), who live in a forest close to the death camp. They once had a child of their own, but he or she died at a young age and both parents have dealt with it in their own way.

The woodcutter has accepted his fate, to the point that, since they don’t have any food to spare, at least there isn’t another mouth to feed.

His wife, on the other hand, has been praying to the Gods to give her something, anything to restore her faith.

And then, this little infant, this most precious of cargoes - a term used by the Nazis when referring to the Jews as ‘merchandise’ - is dropped in the snow.

She saves the child, first from the cold, then from the anger of her husband, who doesn’t like Jews - even if the word Jew is never used in the movie - whom he refers to as ‘the heartless.’

Even if only to find out, ‘that even the heartless have a heart.’ Go figure…

As you may expect, the woodcutter falls in love with the little girl, but then the real problems begin. For starters, can they keep the girl safe from the threats of the outside world?

I won’t spoil too much, but prepare to cry but also to feel uplifted through much of the second half of this emotionally affecting movie.

Michel Hazanavicius (best known for his Oscar-winner The Artist) drew all the characters himself, in a style that combines influences from French artist Henri Rivière’s Japanese inspired paintings via Russian illustrations from the 1930’s to some early Disney, leading to an end result looking something like a European graphic novel.

La plus précieuse des marchandises (as it is called in French) was the first animated movie to be selected for the main Cannes competition since 2008, and it works both as a (deceptively) simple fairytale and as a finely crafted piece of art.

I give it four stars!