Claude Barras, director of “Sauvages”: “I worked with Penans who knew Bruno Manser”

Published on October 12, 2024 at 8:30 p.m. / Modified on October 12, 2024 at 9:13 p.m.

When you have made a first feature film acclaimed at Cannes, nominated for the Oscars and the Golden Globes and winner of, among others, three Swiss Film Awards and two Césars, you are inevitably expected, with the risk of disappointing… But despite the triumph of My life as a Zucchini (2016), Claude Barras put no pressure on himself. And here he comes back with Savagesa new animated film in volume that is even more impressive, aside from finely written characters, its settings are astonishingly lush, inspired in part by David Hockney and Douanier Rousseau.

Savages takes place in Borneo. The heartbreaking first sequence of the film sees a baby orangutan deprived of its mother, killed before its eyes. Kéria and her father take him in. And now the little girl, who knows nothing or very little about the forest, finds herself forced to live with her cousin, Selaï. He is Penan and his family wants to send him to school in order to protect him by keeping him away from the conflict which pits this original people against deforestation companies which, inexorably, destroy their habitat and with it an entire ecosystem. In contact with this cousin whom she will begin to reject, Kéria will live a founding experience and reconnect with her indigenous roots. His mother is a Penan who, she was told, had been devoured by a panther…

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