Oscar-winning filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius transitions into animation with a film set during the Holocaust, The Most Precious of Cargoes.

This is a film that deals with a poor woodcutter (Grégory Gadebois) and his wife (Dominique Blanc), both of whom live in the Polish forest. They are not living the best of lives, what with the cold, poverty, and war surrounding them. The wife has been wanting to have a child for the longest time but neither of them have been blessed with a child. Eventually, her prayers are answered in the most tragic way possible. The woodcutter’s wife is walking through the snow when she hears crying in the distance. It turns out that a baby had been thrown from the train as it passed through the forest on its way to Auschwitz.

The woodcutter’s wife refers to their new child as the most precious of cargoes. Her husband is having none of it, becoming very antisemitic in the process of rejection. Thankfully, he comes around. There are those, however, that know she was never pregnant and start asking questions. Eventually, both the war and Holocaust will come to an end and the father (Denis Podalydès)–after surviving who knows how long in a world of hell–will come looking for his daughter. What happens when he does?

Hazanavicius–who is Jewish with grandparents who moved to Paris from both Poland and Lithuania–previously declared that he would never do a film that was either about or had anything to do with the Holocaust. How did he end up directing and adapting The Most Precious of Cargoes for the screen? It turns out that he was swept away by Jean-Claude Grumberg’s story. He described Grumberg’s work as being a “deep, powerful, humanist story, and at the same time it’s subtle and modest.”

Embarking upon any film in which one must depict deportations or the camps is never an easy feat. As challenging as viewing such films may be for an audience, it’s just as much of a challenge for those bringing the era back to life. We saw it last year with We Were the Lucky Ones. There are plenty of others as the list of films and TV shows go on and on. In any event, one could see why Hazanavicius was drawn to adapting The Most Precious of Cargoes for the screen, especially with his parents having been “hidden children” during the Holocaust.

Interestingly, the Covid-19 pandemic put production on pause and the filmmaker soon turned his attention to making zombie comedy Final Cut. Most newcomers to animation would have brought on a co-director from the animation genre. This isn’t the case with The Most Precious of Cargoes. Hazanavicius was basically starting from scratch. His initial hand-drawn approach to the sketches were rather traditional, too.

As a filmmaker, Hazanavicius is less focused on the horrors or the camps. It does beg the question of what duties do TV and film projects have when it comes to the Holocaust. Is there an obligation to educate audience members? There are some moments in The Most Precious of Cargoes where the animation can be just especially brutal because of what happened. We especially see this during a sequence taking place at the camp–all we see is death in their eyes. At the same time, there’s a good chunk of the film that one wouldn’t even know anything bad was happening because we only see the crematoria smokestacks from the distance.

Here’s what the filmmaker has to say about The Most Precious of Cargoes:

It’s a movement of darkness towards light. It’s a bright story that reveals what is the best about mankind–and first and foremost women. It’s a vital energy and if the film calls us to remember anything or anyone, it’s the Righteous Among the Nations. Those men and women who risked their own lives to save others. They are the ones the film honours. It is neither a commemoration of the victims nor a condemnation of the persecutors. And in fact, that seems to be very typically Jewish: you always choose life. Without resorting to any form of demonstration or theory, this story embodies that precept.

The Most Precious of Cargoes isn’t a stylish movie as far as today’s animation standards are concerned–in fact, the film’s hand-drawn animation takes a classical approach–but it’s a reminder of how far people went to risk their lives in saving Jews. G-d only knows how much we’re missing that in animation in this era of filmmaking. Meanwhile, we’re getting further away from the end of the Holocaust so there is a question to be said about what sort of Holocaust projects will we be getting as we move forward. Will animation take over for documentary or will TV and live-action films offer the bulk of storytelling? Time will tell.

DIRECTOR: Michel Hazanavicius
SCREENWRITERS: Michel Hazanavicius and Jean-Claude Grumberg
NARRATOR: Jean-Louis Trintignant
CAST: Dominique Blanc, Grégory Gadebois, Denis Podalydès

The Most Precious of Cargoes holds its Atlanta premiere during the 2025 Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. StudioCanal will release the film in the US at a later date. Grade: 4/5

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