On Thursday 14 March, all Year 7 students and Year 9 French students made an excursion to Brisbane to take part in the annual French Film Festival. This year, we selected an animated film Dilili à Paris made by an animation maestro Michel Ocelot. The purpose of the excursion was to celebrate and gain appreciation of the French speaking world in a fun and educational way.

At the James Street Cinema, students watched the film while enjoying a croissant and a drink. An outdoor lunch was enjoyed at a local park on the way home.

The film was interesting in several ways. It placed colourful animated characters over beautiful photo-realistic backdrops. The main characters were a precocious six-year-old girl, Dilili, a stowaway from New Caledonia, and Orel, a French delivery boy, who together solved a kidnapping mystery happening in Paris. In the process of solving the kidnappings, the pair met with many well-known people from the Belle Époque, Marie Curie, Claude Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Louis Pasteur, just to name a few.

The film provided a meaningful lesson in French cultural history, one that comes wrapped in an enchanting tale of brave young heroes, extraordinary places and magical encounters in which good eventually triumphs over evil.

Tuija Hast

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