This is his very first animated film. After the successes, among others, of The Artist or OSS 117, Michel Hazanavicius returns with The Most Valuable of Goods. A special project since it involves adaptation into animation from a work by the writer Jean-Claude Grumberg. It tells the story ofa couple of Polish lumberjacks who go to recover a baby thrown away by its Jewish parents from the window of a train en route to the death camps.
“The film depicts things that are part of my private life, more family things: proximity to Jean-Claude Grumberg, the evocation of the Shoah… It's something that I had never done head-on and that I didn't particularly want to do. Even the practice of drawing is quite intimate, confides the director. But I don't know if that makes it a more personal film than the others. I believe that from the moment you direct a film, when you make it, the way of constructing a scene, the way of bringing the actors to a place, the way of organizing the story, it is YOU. You're telling yourself.”
A film coming out in a tense geopolitical context. “You really have to want to do somewhat outrageous political manipulation if you want to make this film something other than what it is,” defends Michel Hazanavicius. It is a humanist, peaceful tale, which was written by Grumbert about ten years ago and which began to be made for the cinema six years ago for me. In no case would this be a form of proselytism or a form of response to a current situation.”
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