Fanny's Journey

1943, occupied France. Jewish families are sending their children to homes under false identities. Thirteen year old Fanny is in one of them with her two younger sisters. As German forces approach, those running the home decide to take the children to the Swiss border. On the way the adults have to leave the group and eleven children are on their own. Responsibility falls to Fanny: trains, checkpoints and crossing the border on foot. Lola Doillon directs. The story is real. It rests on the account of Fanny Ben-Ami, who survived the war and put what happened into a book years later. What is striking is the absence of adults. For most of the narrative the people deciding, lying and calculating danger are children; the film does not present them as small adults either, they are frightened and they make mistakes. The violence is not shown; the threat stays outside the frame and the tension comes from there. Most of the young cast are inexperienced, and that naturalness is the best thing in it. It is built openly for a family audience; the subject is heavy but the telling is kept to what children can watch. Who it is for: viewers who follow narratives of the Second World War and historical drama centred on children. Who it is not for: the narrative is softened in places, there are many characters, and the tension stays inside genre convention.