CinéCola Film Festival: Ernest et Célestine

CinéCola is a community-wide French and Francophone Film Festival, which originated from a collaborative desire to bring recent French and Francophone films to South Carolina in an effort to promote the French language and the cultural diversity of the Francophone world. The festival committee is composed of dedicated faculty from the French Program at the University of South Carolina and the Modern Languages Division at Columbia College.

Ernest et Célestine: This utterly charming animated film about interspecies friendship, directed by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Pater, and Benjamin Renner, is based on a series of children?s books by the Belgian author-illustrator Gabrielle Vincent (1929?2000). In an unnamed French city, two different realms of sworn enemies exist: above ground live the bears; below it reside the mice. Celestine, a wee mouse orphan who is being trained for a career in dentistry, but dreams of being an artist instead, meets a kindred spirit in adult Ernest, an ursine musician whom she convinces not to eat her. They seal their bond by breaking into a candy store together and soon find themselves on the lam from those who are appalled by their amity. These unlikely friends set up their own home in the woods, delighting in both their similarities and differences. The detailed, warm, hand-drawn animation emphasizes the tender companionship between a mouse who loves to sketch and a bear who is happiest when playing a violin. 2012. 80 minutes. In French with English subtitles.