April And | The Extraordinary World -2015- French...

The film explores heavy themes: ecological collapse (the world is literally running out of trees and clean air), the ethics of animal testing, and the totalitarian impulse to suppress knowledge. It is a film for adults dressed up as a children’s adventure. If you are a fan of The Triplets of Belleville , The City of Lost Children , or Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky (which this film directly references), April and the Extraordinary World belongs on your shelf.

What makes Avril so compelling is her quiet resilience. She isn’t a warrior or a chosen one; she is a scientist. Her weapons are curiosity and logic. In a world that has outlawed learning, she is a revolutionary simply because she asks, "Why?" Directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci (with a script co-written by graphic novelist Benjamin Legrand), the film’s aesthetic is a love letter to the ligne claire (clear line) style of Hergé ( The Adventures of Tintin ). The characters are simple, round, and expressive, but the backgrounds are impossibly detailed. April and the Extraordinary World -2015- FRENCH...

Imagine a world where Thomas Edison never beat Nikola Tesla. Where electricity is a fringe concept, and the world runs on coal and steam. Now, push that world forward to the 1940s, and you’ll find a Paris shrouded in perpetual smog, ruled by a Prussian-like Empire, and populated by talking lizards. That is the strange, sad, and stunning universe of this French-Belgian-Canadian co-production. The film opens with a brilliant sequence set in 1870. Napoleon III is losing the Franco-Prussian War. Desperate, he calls upon two famous scientists—Gustave Franklin and his daughter—to create a "Ultimate Weapon." But just as they are about to reveal a formula for invincible soldiers, a bolt of lightning strikes the lab. The secret dies. The Franklins disappear. And history takes a sharp left turn. The film explores heavy themes: ecological collapse (the