Programme 2010

Raining Cats and Frogs

La prophétie des grenouilles
France, 2003, 35 mm, colour, 90'. In French language with English and Slovenian subtitles. Suitable for children.

Directed by: Jacques-Rémy Girerd
Script: Jacques-Rémy Girerd, Antoine Lanciaux, Iouri Tcherenkov
Art design: Iouri Tcherenkov, Jean-Loup Felicioli
Animation: Zoia Trofimova, Michael Dudok de Witt, Alain Gagnol, Luis Rego, Jacques Higelin, Romain Bouteille
Photography: Patrick Talleron
Editing: Hervé Guichard
Music: Serge Besset
Sound: Frédéric Attal
Voices: Michel Piccoli (Ferdinand), Laurentine Milebo (Juliette), Coline Girerd (Lili), Kevin Hervé (Tom), Anouk Grimberg (Želva), Annie Girardot (slonica Denise), Michel Galabru (slon Roger), Jacques Higelin (Lev)
Producent / Produced by: Folimage (Patrick Eveno, Jacques-Rémy Girerd), Studio Canal, France 2 Cinéma, Rhône-Alpes Cinéma

At the end of the world, on a cosy farm perched at the top of a hill, Tom lives with his loving foster parents: the calm and wise ex-sailor Ferdinand and the temperamental African Juliette. Their neighbours own a small country zoo and Tom is best friends with their daughter Lili. When her parents go on a short trip, they entrust their daughter and the animals to Tom's family. The children are thrilled, but the frog elder soon warns them that they are in grave danger: the frogs predict 40 days of continuous rain. The wind starts blowing and black clouds start gathering. This is the start of an incredible adventure filled with hardship and misery.

Jacques-Rémy Girerd (b. 1952) studied at the Lyon L'école des Beaux-Arts. He worked as a high school professor and teacher at the Grenoble Art School. In 1984 he and a small group of enthusiasts founded the Folimage studio in Valence, which he continues to run to this day. His first animated film Quatre mille images fètales in 1978 was followed by a decade of creating short stop-motion animations until the 1989 films Amerlock and the César-winning Best Animated Film Le petit cirque de toutes les couleurs. After the birth of his first child in 1988 he focused mainly on directing cartoons for children and started several educational children's series for television: Le bonheur de la vie, Mine de rien, Ma petite planète chérie. In 1997 he creates his featurette L'enfant au grelot, which became hugely popular in the cinemas (300.000 viewers). Afterwards he embarked on his first full-lenght feature La prophétie des grenouilles, which was followed by his second one, Mia et le Migou, in 2008.

Director's note
"We could never have imagined we would achieve so much either technically or artistically. Such an ambitious project had not been attempted in France since Paul Grimault's The King and the Bird. We had to reinvent everything. It was a great joy, but I must confess things sometimes got tough [...]. For me, the toughest thing was never to lose the vital thread of the plot, to retain its initial freshness and always stay at a safe distance from the film so as to remain clear-sighted." Jacques-Rémy Girerd

Awards
Grand Prix Ottawa International Animation Film Festival, 2004; Special Mention Berlin International Film Festival, 2004; Adult's Jury Award Chicago International Children's film Festival 2004