This is a documentary about cartoon artists spoken in the first person by the artists themselves. The list is impressive: from Le Monde’s cartoonist Plantu to Damien Glez from Burkina Faso, the film features professionals of cartoon art in their different work environments, mostly dangerous areas. In the beginning, we hear Plantu’s voice as he walks by the Seine and sets the tone for the film: “The world today is covered in darkness, and drawing is a way to escape from that. Democracy is a battle that is fought one step at a time: we haven’t got there yet.” And immediately, while he draws in a political meeting, he confesses: “I never thought I would become a cartoonist. My parents thought I was mute –I was always drawing. I didn’t need to speak, the drawings did it for me.” And those two paths that occasionally cross are the ones this extraordinary documentary walks on: the political dimension cartoons take when they challenge power in totalitarian regimes, and the intimate connection of that strange bird that is an adult person drawing. Also, Cartoonists shows drawing artists while drawing. Is there anything more hypnotic than to watch a drawing artist delivering characters out of a white sheet of paper? Yes there is: to watch him doing that in a film. BE
Sections: Panorama Competencia DDHHD: Stéphanie Valloatto
G: Stéphanie Valloatto, Radu Mihaileanu
F: Cyrille Blanc
E: Marie-Jo Audiard
S: Gilles Laurent, Aline Gavroy
M: Armand Amard
P: Radu Mihaileanu, Cyrille Blanc
CP: Oï Oï Oï Productions, Cinextra Productions
Plantu, Nadia Khiari, Michel Kichka, Baha Boukhari, Rayma Suprani
Kinology. Grégoire Graesslin
T +33 9 5147 4344 E festivals@kinology.eu W kinology.eu
She studied Law and Political Sciences for years before working in film direction. For over fifteen years, she wrote and directed short and medium-length documentaries for TV channels like France 3, France 5 and TV5. Cartoonists - Foot Soldiers of Democracy is her first documentary feature.
05 May 2015
25 April 2015
25 April 2015
