Ma vie de Courgette (2016, Claude Barras)

With a running time of just a little more than one hour, this film is obviously designed for a young audience. The book, I have been informed, is not aimed at children. But as the theme of this film is child neglect, the director had the courage to include children in the target audience. The version I saw said, that the film was suitable for children from the age of 7.
It mat be that modern children can digest such things packaged in a stop motion picture. Icare is a lonely child. His mother sits in front of the TV and drinks beer. His father has run away. Icare  plays with a kite and the empty cans. The friendly policeman Raymond takes care of the unkempt child. In the orphanage Courgette at first has to cope with the teasings of Simon, but soon he experiences love and care for the first time. When a new girl, Camille,  arrives, he even experiences love and at last he gets the chance to be adopted together with her.
This sounds like a family film, although some details must be difficult to swallow for very young viewers. Probably they won't read that Courgette was two days alone with the dead body of his mother (as written on the Raymond's computer screen). Usually the evil ones in this kind of film are more comical than vicious. In this film Courgette is really scared when his mother threatens to beat him up. All the children in the orphanage have stories of real neglect on their CV. But Barras never becomes sentimental. For example when Courgette fights for a beer can, bwcause it is the only memory he has of his mother and whrn he later remodels it for Camille.
A film for everybody with a heart.
9/10