My Life as a Zucchini

Claude Barras made his first feature from a screenplay written with Céline Sciamma, out of Gilles Paris’s 2002 novel. The book had already been filmed in France for television with live actors, so this is the second adaptation. The puppets were moved frame by frame at the Pôle Pixel studios, Villeurbanne. A France 3 set report gives the arithmetic: about 30 usable seconds a day, and until April 2015 nine specialist animators at once across 15 separate sets. Barras himself came out of the Émile Cohl school in Lyon. The BBFC passed it PG and then wrote the reason out: mild sex references, references to traumatic childhood experiences. Both are on screen: the jokes the children build from half understood adult behaviour, and the boy’s own hand in his mother’s death. Its wins include the Cristal and the Audience Award at Annecy, Best Adaptation and Best Animated Feature at the 42nd Césars, and Best Animated Feature at the 29th European Film Awards. At the Academy Awards it stayed a nominee, filed under its North American title. A good fit if you want a puppet film that names what the children carry and still gives them a trip to the snow. Not for a household after a safe cartoon evening; the BBFC advice line says as much.