Content from Les Films du Nord

Zibilla, a young zebra adopted by a couple of horses, is the laughing stock of her new schoolmates. She ends up hating her stripes. When she has her stuffed toy stolen, she takes off without a second thought to look for it and that is where her adventures begin...

The history of barbed wire, whose use dates back to the first settlers of the Wild West, always driven by their reckless and ruthless spirit of conquest and selfish ambition to leave their mark on wild lands; of its relationship with politics and mercantilism; of the perversion of the millenary relationship between men and animals; of the evolution of surveillance techniques. Fences and borders: the tragic tale of the enclosure of the world.

The story begins in the basement of a worn-out blues bar in Louisiana in the 1980s. A few regular customers are having a drink. A guitarist gets on stage and everybody comments on the newcomer. The guitarist draws the attention of the audience by tapping the microphone. He introduces himself. He will tell them the true story of Blind Boogie Jones.

Five wolf cubs are playing in the woods and tease Daddy Wolf who is getting ready to go out and “eat them all up”! A musical take on a famous French children’s game.

A rabbit and a squirrel, neighbours and good friends, both love food and good company. They nevertheless quarrel over their different tastes. The squirrel moves out during the night and is caught by a fox…

In a Buddhist temple, young monks begin their meditation when the master arrives. One of the children is distracted by a sparrow and follows the bird outside the monastery. Here begins a walk off the beaten paths that goes to the tour of his lifetime. When he has become an old monk, he returns back to the temple where young monks are waiting for him. One of them is distracted by a sparrow…

You have gone, Vasco, you wanted to go far away. But we kept you back, with concrete and kisses, and you tasted the blood of whales. But it was not enough, you wanted to go further, towards the horizon that fascinated you so much. But how far will you go, Vasco?

A fisherman and his wife live together happily in their humble dwelling. One day, the man finds a tortoise with a golden shell caught in his nets. The tortoise promises the fisherman that all his wishes will come true if he lets her go free. This touching version of a traditional tale illustrates how greed often gets the better of men and women.

A little mouse tries to take shelter inside the trunk of an old tree, when it suddenly scolds her in a gruff, menacing voice. The mouse runs away and meets a squirrel, who disbelievingly scampers up to the tree but soon beats a hasty retreat. A rabbit then a chaffinch receive the same treatment, when finally a tortoise comes along who does not let herself be taken in.

Yuku is a young mouse who lives with her family in the cellar of a castle. Her grandmother passes on the family values by telling her timeless folk tales. Injured in a tussle with a cat, the old mouse is bedridden and she tells her children that she will have to leave them to follow the little blind mole into the Earth’s tunnels. In one of her grandmother’s storybooks, Yuku learns that the flower of the Himalayas can bring her eternal light. She leaves on a journey of discovery to find the flower.

A family of giraffes is spending their holidays in a far-away forest. The baby giraffe gets lost and meets some of the animals that live there. But a bad-tempered squirrel does not seem at all ready to accept the newcomer. When the others see that he is not only kind but also pretty smart, he soon becomes one of the crowd, much to the annoyance of the grumpy squirrel.

An excellent example of how sometimes dialogue is not necessary, Totems is a visual display of our inner animal disposition. A lumberjack is working in a forest when a tree falls down and his leg gets stuck. As he is trapped in a beautiful but cruel environment, the despair awakens his primal instincts.

A mouse is chased by a cat who is pursued by a dog that is pursued by a little girl who is put right by her mommy who has enough with the grumbling grandpa who makes his soup and needs a carrot.

Robert has not had a good day. He comes back from school in a bad mood and gets sent to his room by his Dad. He feels something horrible rising up inside him : it is anger…

A family goes for a nice picnic in the countryside. But the pleasant rural atmosphere soon makes a turn for the worse.

Fifty years separate Irène and Sandrine. One, from Russian nobility, lived through the fall of the regime, the absence of an exiled father, and an adoptive family. The other grew up spending her playtime reconstructing a fairy-tale Russian world.

A swimmer struggles to commit to a high dive.

Winter is approaching, and the last day of the red-yellow-brown glow of autumn is a good time for the animals in the forest to organize a very special race. Ardently they construct buggies from discarded materials, and as the weather turns frosty, the race is on for the hare, fox, hedgehog, bear, and others. With mutual caring, the forest animals ride toward the finish line and their wintering grounds.

Animaton short by Arnaud Demuynck and Cecilia Marum.

Oana is working. I am watching her. Tonight, the very last file will be closed. She does not want to translate the words of others anymore. She thinks that tomorrow she will start writing her own words. But she will not, I know that…