French Animated Film ‘Sauvages’ Is a Delight

Once upon a time, there lived an 11-year-old girl named Kéria, and she is the heart and soul of the new “ecological fable” Sauvages, a stop-motion film that premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival this year. Sauvages comes from filmmaker Claude Barras whose Ma vie de Courgette delighted audiences at Cannes in 2016 (and won two César Awards and was nominated for an Oscar nomination).

The film is set on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia, where gorgeous tropical rainforests are also worth “millions,” thanks to food industry-related demand for products like palm oil. In these forests live the Penan people, a nomadic group of indigenous people who are hunters and gatherers. Kéria’s grandfather is part of the Penan group, and her mother was from the same community.

One day, Kéria and her father discover an orangutan and a baby orangutan. Kéria hides the young orangutan in her backpack to protect him, and he takes to her the way he would his own mother. She feeds him, nurtures him, and cares for him at the home she shares with her father. From a young age, Kéria was told that her mother was killed when she was eaten by panthers. She’s fearful of the forest. So, when her young indigenous cousin from the Penan group comes to live with her so he can attend school to learn to read and write, Kéria is unwelcoming and mocks him. She says he has stinky feet, and her cousin overhears this and runs away from the family home.

Kéria, overcome with guilt, runs after her cousin, begging him to come back, and saying her father will be worried sick about them. She follows her cousin all the way into the forest, where his family lives. With her mobile phone quickly dying, the baby orangutan lost after following her cousin, and darkness setting in, Kéria curls up on a forest log and begins to cry as creepy insects come closer. Suddenly, her young cousin appears and saves her.

This begins of journey of Kéria becoming acquainted with her Penan roots and the forest where her mother grew up. When lumberjacks threaten the forest again (the way they did when Kéria’s mother was alive), the biodiversity of Borneo is at stake, and so are the lives of Kéria’s beloved family. Her father, who finally finds her in the forest, says he doesn’t want Kéria to end up the way her mother did. The truth comes out: Her mother wasn’t eaten by a panther, but she was mercilessly killed while trying to protect the forest.

Kéria’s grandfather says that man-made roads mean death, and that is to say that the harmful practices of corporations exploiting the forest lead to the deaths of Penan people and the animals in the forest. Sauvages is part of an activist campaign to raise awareness around these types of harmful deforestation practices and the way they threaten the people who are living in these environments.

Apart from being a beautifully told, moving story about the power of the parent-child bond, the strength of Mother Nature and the imperative to protect it, this movie is also fun, funny, and silly. You’ll be smiling at points during Sauvages, despite the heavy nature of the film’s themes, and there are many cute moments that make this film a pure joy. While it is an animated film, and suitable for older children, some violent parts of the movie may mean younger children might be better off waiting to watch this movie when they get older.

Sauvages is a tale that highlights human rights and forest preservation in a creative and moving way; this film is a delight, and it will have you thinking about the world around us in a new and enlightened way.