Sunday

Little bald Léon loves his grandfather. He loves the old man's bushy black beard, which seems endowed with magic powers. It even turns caterpillars into butterflies. But Léon's grandmother wants to cut off the unkempt beard and regain the distinguished-looking man she married, who wore just a tidy moustache. When the old man's asleep, grandmother prowls, scissors in hand, but Léon's keeping a watchful eye on her. As long as grandpa lives, the beard will stay! But one day, grandpa doesn't wake up. Well, it's natural for grandfathers to die before their grandchildren. Léon is sad, especially as his grandmother is at last able to shave off that pesky beard. Goodbye hair! Adieu butterflies! Adieu lovely beard! Now the old man's face looks like a mown field. To soften his pain, Léon decides to bury the beard. He digs a hole in the middle of the forest and buries the precious secret. The rising sun next morning reveals that a beard forest has sprung up, thick and black like grandpa's. And from now on, Léon's round head sports a sort of thick black brush. A souvenir of the old days, when he played and laughed with his grandfather. A film without words.

In the vestibule of a hospital room, a young boy waits to see his dying mother. The clamor and spiralling movements of bodies around him intensify, forming a grotesque circus-a cacophonous circle that pushes the child back, depriving him of one final touch of his mother's hand. Using rotoscoped drawings suggestive of charcoal sketches, as well as 3D and object animation techniques, The Circus compels viewing with its unsettling realism. Colour is employed metaphorically to subtly express the promise and the memory of maternal affection. Nicolas Brault's highly personal film, suffused with poetic modesty, casts a poignantly sincere gaze on the heartbreak of a child facing the fearful, mysterious experience of his mother's death.

Partly figurative, partly abstract, Drux Flux is an animation film of fast-flowing images showing modern people crushed by industry. Inspired by One-Dimensional Man by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the filmmaker deconstructs industrial scenes and their terrifying geometry to show the inhumanity of progress. A film without words.