A true animated film about invented islands. About an imaginary, linguistic, political territory. About a real or dreamed country, or something in between. Archipelago is a film of drawings and speeches, that tells and dreams a place and its inhabitants, to tell and dream a little of our world and times.
The story of two friends on the cusp of adolescence, Rachel Samson's warm-hearted animation is an ode to those special summer days that contain major changes.
Bridgeport, January 17, 2008. A teenage girl is found hanged in her room. While everything points to suicide, the autopsy report reveals something else. Ten years later, the director and cousin of the teenager examine the past causes and future consequences of this unsolved crime. Like an imagined biography, the film will explore the relationship between the security of the living space and the violence that can jeopardize it.
After a failed armed attack during which she abandons her companions, Hélène flees into the forest and meets Catherine, a mysterious alter ego, a carnivorous and tempting alter ego. This double will take her to a fantastic valley, where metamorphoses, poisonous powers and great upheavals will soon shake up the order of things. Hélène will have to revisit her choices and the moral, political and human dilemmas that circumscribe them.
A winter tale: the real experience of an imagined love.
Zaire, January 1993. Rachel's family, an 8-year-old French girl, lives in Kinshasa in a house overlooking the Congo River. A sensual and intimate film about memory, writing and forgetting.
Worried about the distance he maintains with his father and the resulting lack of communication, a young man tries to find the meaning of this estrangement by accompanying him to his workshop as he makes a piece of furniture.
