Les Larmes de la Seine (The Seine's Tears)
2021 · 9m · France
Directed by Yanis Belaid, Eliott Benard, Alice Letailleur, Nicolas Mayeur, Etienne Moulin, Hadrien Pinot, Philippine Singer, Lisa Vicente
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
On October 17, 1961, Algerian workers march through Paris to protest a discriminatory police curfew, with one demonstrator documenting the events through a handheld camera — bearing witness to a state massacre in which an estimated 38–200 people were killed and whose truth was suppressed by French authorities for nearly 40 years.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
October 17 1961 Paris massacre animated with deliberately stop-motion-like 3D and slowed frame rates faking documentary handheld. 249 selections, 104 awards — the recognition is earned and the historical recovery matters.
Eight directors recovering the 1961 Algerian massacre in puppet-mimicking 3D with deliberately slowed frame rates — formal artifice heightening documentary truth, then a fantastical underwater concert. Two hundred and forty-nine selections, Oscar-qualifying; a serious work of historical reckoning.
Deliberately 'puppet-like' 3D animation with slow frame-rates simulating handheld documentary footage — that paradox where artificiality heightens documentary authenticity is brilliant craft thinking, and the underwater transition into a fantastical concert is exactly the right symbolic move. 249 selections and 104 awards for a reason.