For her tenth birthday, Cathy’s whimsical father gives her a present that is a little out of the ordinary: a fertilised duck egg. Her father warns her: the duckling will think the first person it claps its eyes on is its mother. And that first person, against all odds, is Margaux, Cathy’s friend. Cathy is prepared to let Margaux play the role of mother duck, but she is confined to a wheelchair. Her parents find her incapable of taking care of the duckling and try to get rid of the bird. Like two birds of passage Margaux and Cathy run away so that they can love and look after the little duckling far away from the world of grown-ups.
An exciting adventure of two courageous friends and their duckling that needs to be saved from harm. No effort must be spared in helping the bird adapt to her new family.
“By trying to overprotect our children believing it is for their own ‘good’, and confining them to spaces called secure, the recurring message we are giving them is to believe that life is dangerous, even if we are probably right in some situations. We also communicate the message that adventure is not part of life because the adventure is, in essence, full of the unexpected. And yet, it is undoubtedly the unexpected that makes the spice of life.” (Olivier Ringer)
Olivier Ringer
Born in 1961 in Brussels, Ringer is a scriptwriter, director and producer, mostly working in collaboration with his brother, Yves Ringer, co-producer of The Birds of Passage. Ringer has attained international renown with his second feature film, À pas de loup, which premiered in the prestigious Generation Section at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival, and then went on to win a series of international awards.
filmography
1986 Haute pression (short)
1988 Les guignols de l'info (/TV series)
2006 Pom, le poulain
2011 À pas de loup
2015 Les oiseaux de passage (The Birds of Passage)