Journal animé
2016 · 4m · France
Directed by Donato Sansone
Genres: animation, documentary, satire
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, provocative
Between September 15 and November 15, 2015, an animator doodles over and defaces the daily pages of Libération as a sarcastic commentary on the news — until the November 13 Paris attacks strip the playfulness away and the line turns heavy, charcoal-black, metaphorical.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A newspaper-defacement diary that starts as clever culture-jamming and then gets gutted by history—most filmmakers would either commit to the provocation or retreat into sincerity, but Sansone refuses the easy exit, and that refusal is the whole point.
The formal architecture here is flawless: animation as palimpsest, each day a frame, the progression from irreverent mark-making to blacked-out despair a perfect formal analog for collective emotional rupture; it sits naturally alongside Marker and Farocki, political essay-film lineage intact.
The decision to keep the pen the same tool throughout—just changing pressure, density, intention—is devastating; one object doing the work of tonal collapse that lesser films would split across sequences or media.
Reviews
Rattrapé par la dure réalité sordide en plein exercice d'improvisation, Donato Sansone brave les nouvelles sans filet, se confrontant à la douleur palpable du moment tout en gardant intact son envie de réfléchir sur la gestion moderne de l'information à travers le prisme de la liberté d'expression.