Paris, 1941. A family of scientists is on the brink of discovering a powerful longevity serum when all of a sudden a mysterious force abducts them, leaving their young daughter April behind. Ten years later, April (Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard) lives alone with her cat, Darwin, and carries on her family’s research in secret. But she soon finds herself at the center of a shadowy and far-reaching conspiracy, and on the run from government agents, bicycle-powered dirigibles and cyborg rat spies.
From the creators of the Academy Award-nominated Persepolis and the mind of renowned graphic novelist Jacques Tardi comes a riveting sci-fi adventure set in an alternate steampunk world.
Working with Jacques Tardi was great but not easy. It’s the first time his universe was adapted in animation. The singularity of his style made his success and Tardi is a monument of the French comic book field.
- Christian Desmares
The quest for progress and a better life can have dark consequences. This is why I wanted to make this film. This is a uchronia—an alternate history. You can recognize Paris but it is weird. Several famous places are in the film, like the Eiffel Tower and The Grand Palais botanic museum. So we took a lot of photos of these different places, like Tardi used to make his books. And we had a lot of documents: old pictures of Paris, of the 1900 Universal Exhibition. The [bleak] color palette is inspired by the colors Tardi uses and by German Expressionism French polar (crime thrillers) of the ’40s.
- Christian Desmares