If it is due in theaters on November 24, the animated film “Where is Anne Frank!” has already been presented out of competition, Friday evening, at the 74th Cannes Film Festival.

Since “Waltz with Bachir” (the biggest Israeli success in France with 500,000 admissions, César 2009 for Best Foreign Film and Golden Globe), Ari Folman is a filmmaker admired and followed and who, with his innovative concept of “animated documentary” , will have achieved the unprecedented associated with high graphic quality.

This year, he returns with a variation of Anne Frank’s diary , in the light of contemporary tragedies such as that of migrants without political or humanitarian asylum … Long-term matured, this project which is inspired by the director’s own memories. – her parents escaped Nazi abominations – extrapolates the story of the young Dutch Jew (whose diary has been translated into 70 languages), imagining her confidant and diary recipient, Kitty, escaping from the pages of the book, and observing the world of 2020 through the upset gaze of that of the 1940s.

A CONTEMPORARY TRANSCRIPTION OF THE BESTSELLER

In an incessant waltz of back and forth between past and present, Anne Frank and her family, contemporary European youth and the ghosts of Nazism, the filmmaker dares often stunning narrative arabesques. It ends up moving us and above all making us think about the fate of migrants , innocent children of today who, even if they are not fortunately doomed to the genocidal tragedy, remain outcasts without rights or hopes in the world. ‘horizon. The latter are innocent victims of corrupt, dictatorial regimes, and the butt of Western selfishness.

It is a bias which has the merit of sincerity. And who will debate. The graphics and artistic direction are brilliant, and even if one does not reach the emotional power of “Waltz with Bachir”, “Where’s Anne Frank!” has every chance of becoming a reference.