Claude Barras gives children’s troubles the attention they deserve, trusting expressive stop-motion faces and modest exchanges. We rate that patience and warmth, though My Life as a Zucchini sometimes offers comfort too quickly.
Fi1m perspective
In My Life as a Zucchini (2016), the children have oversized heads and large eyes, but Barras does not need to keep them busy to hold our attention. He lets a modest exchange between them matter, and gives their ordinary days enough space for friendship to become believable. These are children in care, carrying hurts left by adults, and the jokes do not require them to forget that. We were moved by the friendships because Barras lets the children be funny and companionable without tidying away their histories. It is a small film that takes its audience’s patience seriously.
The early shorts Banquise (2005) and Land of the Heads (2009), both co-directed with Cédric Louis, preceded the move to features. The appeal of his first feature is how little it strains to make each encounter into an event. Céline Sciamma’s writing helps keep the warmth of My Life as a Zucchini honest. At 66 minutes, it also benefits from Valentin Rotelli’s editing, which connects the episodes without pressing each one towards a dramatic peak. The children have time to get used to one another, and we have time to watch.
The reservation is that comfort sometimes comes too quickly, as though Barras is reluctant to let unhappiness remain for quite as long as it needs. Sophie Hunger’s music supports the warmer passages, but occasionally we wanted it to stop and let the faces speak for themselves. The puppets are expressive enough to manage without that help. Those lapses matter because the film is otherwise so willing to trust a quiet moment. They do not undo the care taken over the children’s daily lives.
Savages (2024), his second feature after an eight-year gap, takes the child-centred stop-motion approach towards environmental conflict on a larger scale. The subject broadens, while children still provide the way into difficult material. His preference for colour, composition and visible imperfections leaves polished realism low on the list of priorities. For a first encounter with his work, choose My Life as a Zucchini and allow its quieter exchanges to set the pace.
Biography
Claude Barras is a Swiss film director, animator, producer and writer specialising in stop-motion animation. He was born on 19 January 1973 in Sierre, Switzerland. He studied illustration and computer graphics at the École Emile Cohl in Lyon, anthropology and digital images at the University of Lyon, and computer graphics at ECAL in Lausanne. He worked as a freelance illustrator in Geneva and co-founded the animation studio Hélium Films with Cédric Louis.
Barras directed several short films, often in collaboration with Louis, including Banquise (2005) and Land of the Heads (2008). His first feature, the stop-motion film My Life as a Courgette (also known as My Life as a Zucchini, 2016), was screened in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes and received numerous awards, including two César Awards; it was Switzerland's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for Best Animated Feature. His second feature, Savages (2024), is also a stop-motion animation.
