A film in the cinema this Wednesday, The Lulus Warand a comic strip in bookstores this Friday, Friends of Spirouconfront young protagonists with the horror of war.
The Lulus War At the movie theater, Friends of Spirou in bookstores… While the war suddenly returned to Europe last year, fiction takes hold of this theme and tells it from a child’s perspective.
In theaters this Wednesday, The Lulus War is theadaptation of a popular comic signed Régis Hautière and Hardoc. The story of four orphans trying to survive as France, during the summer of 1914, becomes a battlefield.
Available Friday, Friends of Spirou by David Evrard, Jean-David Morvan and BenBK is inspired by a true story: that of Belgian children who became resistance fighters during the Second World War.
The theme is recurrent: released on January 4, Skirmishers follows the fate of a father (Omar Sy) to save his son from the “great war”. A success, with more than 700,000 entries. Bestseller sold over a million copies, Children of the Resistance since 2015 follows the fate of three children resistant to the Nazis.
Educational works
The press and the public most often acclaim these works because they are always solid educational tools to help young people discover these historical periods. These works also always convey important values.
“Reading comics The Lulus WarI was overthrown”, explains Yann Samuell, director of the film adaptation. “It’s filled with values such as not being afraid of the stranger, of rebuilding oneself…”
Confronting the innocence of children with the horrors of war is also “a beautiful metaphor”, continues the director: “They discover the world as it is destroying itself. They will rise as the world is going down.”
show violence
Intended above all for a family audience, these works approach war with realism, without hiding anything of its horrors. In a key scene from the film The Lulus Warabsent from the comics, the orphans find themselves under fire in a trench.
“It was essential. I would have felt like I was cheating if I made a film called The Lulus War without showing the war”, insists Yann Samuell.
And to add: “We really had to go there. I wanted to immerse the spectator in the feeling that we can have on the forehead.” One of the children thus falls into a shell crater and comes face to face with a floating corpse. A scary sequence.
Make war less abstract
Planned in five volumes, Friends of Spirou also hides nothing of the violence of war, despite its characteristic Tintin. Especially since some of the young resistance fighters at the center of the story met a tragic end in real life.
“We know that there were two deaths in this way”, screenwriter JD Morvan revealed last year to the Branchés Culture website.
A way to make war less abstract, notes Yann Samuell: “Adults are able to adapt while children take it in the face, without understanding why these things happen.” With these works, they will understand.
And the director concludes: “The resilience of children is very strong. These stories show that adults are very busy preserving what they have while children are much more busy building something new.”
