Zucchini is not at all like a vegetable. He is a brave little boy. He believes that he’s alone in the world when his mother dies. Courgette is befriended by a police officer Raymond, who accompanies him to his new foster home filled with other orphans his age. Simon, Ahmed, Jujube, Alice, and Béatrice: they all have their stories to tell, and each story is as sad as it is tender. And then there’s this girl, Camille. At first he struggles to find his place in this strange, at times, hostile environment. Yet with Raymond’s help and his new found friends, Courgette eventually learns to trust, finds true love and at last a new family of his own.

The film is a french language stop motion adapted from the Glles Paaris YA novel by France’s mouth youth saavy screenwriter, Celine Sciamma. It was screened in the Directors Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. It won Audience Award and the Cristal for Best Features Film at Annecy. It was also selected as the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards for this year. Directed by Claude Barras, music by Sophie Hunger and with a release date in October of 2016 in France and Switzerland. I expect this movie to make huge waves in the animated categories at the Oscars and Annies this year. The run time is roughly 66 minutes long and a 7.9 rating out of 10 on IMDb.