IRON BOY

In rural France, eleven-year-old Christophe tries to live up to his rigid, distant father on the family farm, a world quietly disappearing as larger operations swallow the land around it. When he begins collapsing without warning, on the tractor, at school, at dinner, a doctor finds an unlikely fix: Christophe must wear an iron corset to keep himself upright. Exiled from the farm to recover, he discovers an unexpected passion for music and meets Clara, an older, streetwise girl who becomes his guide into a wider world, drawing him into his first taste of independence, first love, and first mischief. Their bond is as fleeting as it is transformative; she arrives, and leaves, like a stroke of fate. Told with a distinctive hand-drawn, watercolor style from Louis Clichy, a Pixar veteran and co-director of the Asterix films, in his solo feature debut, Iron Boy draws on the director's own childhood to create something that is tender, funny and ultimately quite moving.