Les géants

Smoking weed, joyriding, stealing food: the ‘giants’ from the title are full of mischief. It’s a languid summer vacation in the Ardennes mountains of Belgium and the three teenage boys Zak, Seth and Dany have been left to their own devices by their parents. Without a penny in their pocket, they have to fend for themselves. The ideal recipe for an exciting boys book: a series of fairytale adventures in woodlands and over meandering rivers in which not only the local drug dealer and Dany’s crazy brother, but also three pigs, angry wolves and a good fairy turn up.
The worlds of the Belgian actor/director Bouli Lanners are always populated by colourful, eccentric characters. Just as in Ultranova (2005) and Eldorado (2008), Lanners creates a universe of his own that is perched between magic realism and wry-comic absurdity. The painter in Lanners betrays himself in the majestic CinemaScope images. The Giants (SACD Prize in Cannes) is a modern, poetic, bittersweet fairytale about fragile family bonds and pure friendships.