Canada, France, 2025, 72′
In French with Slovenian and English subtitles

Directed by: Félix Dufour-Laperrière
Written by: Félix Dufour-Laperrière
Music Composer: Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière
Editing: Félix Dufour-Laperrière
Sound Design: Olvier Calvert, Samuel Gagnon-Thibodeau
Producers: Nicolas Dufour-Laperrière, Félix Dufour-Laperrière, Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron
Production: Embuscade Films, Miyu Productions
Cast: Zeneb Blanchet, Karelle Tremblay, Mattis Savard-Verhoeven, Barbara Ulrich, Françoise L., Marie B., Félix Dufour-Laperrière

The action of a small group of militant activists goes awry. Hélène, tasked with providing cover from the bushes while the others attack the rich men in a villa, loses consciousness. She finds herself on a metaphysical journey in a netherworld, where a spirit guide confronts her with questions of personal responsibility, the use of violence, and the eternal dilemma in the struggle for a better world: what will change our increasingly oppressive system—big revolutionary swings or small, persistent steps?

Director’s Statement

I’m first and foremost an animation filmmaker, and the script was written with the specific potential of animated images in mind—with their requirements, and the great freedom they offer in terms of directing. I write with colors in mind, with transformations, dreamlike sequences, mental images that take shape on screen. I also write with the awareness that there will be no real bodies, no faces, no human gazes or physical presence. The credibility and depth of the characters—their ability to carry emotion, to make us relate to their dilemmas and what they experience—must be built and sustained through the tools unique to animation: movement, drawing, form, and color.

It’s a story about radicality, with all its contradictions, hopes, dead ends. A story born from deep anger, from overwhelming desires that flare up to try and shake the world into motion—only to collide with the limits of their own actions, and their own internal tensions. The characters come to realize a clear, sometimes irreconcilable opposition: the impossibility of violence, and the impossibility of the status quo.

The entire film was hand-drawn on a graphic tablet, twelve drawings per second. Special care was given to the coloring process, using paints on paper. The goal was to create a sense of closeness between the characters and the spaces they inhabit, and to tie the legibility of the image to the characters’ movements and emotional journey.

Awards and festivals (selection):

– Best Feature Film Cristal Nominee, Annecy IAFF, 2025
– Audience Award Nominee, Director’s Fortnight, Cannes FF 2025
– Best Animated Feature Nominee, Festival Européen du Film Fantastique de Strasbourg 2025
– Animation Competition, DOK Leipzig 2025