CAFARD

Jean Mordant, accompanied by his trainer Victor, has just won the title of World Wrestling Champion in Buenos Aires. At the same time, back home in Ostend, Belgium, his only daughter Mimi is raped by German soldiers. Enraged, Jean vows to avenge this monstrous crime. Upon his return, he enlists in the prestigious ACM (Armoured Car Division) resistance battalion. However, war is unpredictable and events do not unfold as expected, with the unit being shipped overseas. This is the start of a protracted odyssey peppered with setbacks that takes Jean and his companions on a dramatic journey from Russia to the United States by way of the parched Mongolian steppes. For his first animated feature, Flemish filmmaker Jan Bultheel sets his intrigue in the thick of World War I with 400 Belgian soldiers fighting alongside the Russian army even as the Bolshevik revolution surges to the fore. Opting for an ambitious technique based on motion capture (as in the video game industry), with each movement of the characters played by live actors, Cafard stands out for the visual splendor of Bultheel’s refined graphic universe, set against the backdrop of striking pastel landscapes. At last, an animated film where technique is decidedly at the service of a dramatic narrative teeming with plot twists.