A Boat in the Garden

The narrator looks back and tells of his childhood. He is called François and he is eleven at the time. The years are the early nineteen fifties. The house is on the banks of the Marne. The war has just ended and the country is getting back on its feet. One day his father takes something on. He is going to build a boat in the garden. The boat is to be a copy of a famous sailor’s vessel. The sailor is Joshua Slocum. The work stretches over years. Family life turns around that boat. As François grows up he watches his mother and father. His own interest moves towards the sea and towards drawing. The boat never goes into the water. Jean-François Laguionie directed the seventy five minute animation, with Grégory Gadebois among the voices. The French and Luxembourgish coproduction was finished in 2025.