The Most Precious of Cargoes (French: La plus précieuse des marchandises) is a 2024 French-Belgian animated film directed by Michel Hazanavicius, with a screenplay by Jean-Claude Grumberg and Hazanavicius. It is an adaptation of Grumberg's 2019 novel of the same name. The narrator is Jean-Louis Trintignant, marking his final film performance (he passed away in 2022 mere days after recording his lines).
The story is set during World War II and centers on a Jewish girl who gets thrown out of a moving train heading to the Death Camp of Auschwitz as a baby by her parents. She is found by a couple of humble Polish woodcutters, and will change their lives in many ways.
Previews: First look
, Trailer.
This animated film provides examples of:
- Children Are Innocent: The girl's innocence and cheeriness is what eventually wins the woodcutter's heart over.
- Les Collaborateurs: The Polish couple is denounced to the German occupiers by a coworker of the husband for housing a Jewish baby. Several other antisemitic locals form a militia also.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: The gruff woodcutter eventually overcomes his prejudices and warms up to the girl when he's moved by her innocence and cheeriness and senses her heart beating."The heartless have a heart..."
- Gas Chamber: The girl's mother and twin brother are quickly killed in the gas chamber of the camp of Auschwitz after getting out of the train. The father, meanwhile, is kept alive and finds himself forced to shave the heads of deportees.
- Happily Adopted: The woman lovingly takes care of the baby girl right away, but the husband is prejudiced against Jews initially. Then he drops his prejudices when he starts warming up to her.
- Moses in the Bulrushes: The girl's parents decide to abandon her both because the mother doesn't have enough milk left for both her and her brother and because it can potentially save her from certain death. The father wraps her in a tallit prayer shawl and throws her out of the train (more precisely, out of the cattle wagon the Nazis put the family in), and she lands safely in powder snow. The Polish woman then hears the girl crying, finds her in the snow and brings her home.
- Once Upon a Time: The narration by Jean-Louis Trintignant starts with that formula."Once upon a time, deep in a forest, lived a poor woodcutter and his wife. Cold, hunger and poverty made their lives difficult. And then, one day..."
- Skeleton Motif: The forward lights of the train that's headed to the Death Camp of Auschwitz briefly form a skull, an all too obvious meaning.