21/05/2025 - Claude Barras’ second feature tells a story of environmental precarity in Borneo’s rainforest, where family is the last line of defence against the expansion of the local palm oil plantation

Human hands grasp at all living things in the forest until they turn to ash or dust. My Life as a Courgette [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Claude Barras
film profile] director Claude Barras’ latest film, Savages [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Red Carpet @ European Film …
film profile], captures the brittleness of nature in the face of expansionist man. Following its world premiere at Cannes and Best Feature Film win at Annecy in 2024, Savages showed in the International Competition of Feature Films for Children & Young Audiences at Anifilm in Liberec.

At the heart of Savages is Kéria (voiced by Babette De Coster), an 11-year-old girl who lives with her father in a town on the edge of one of Borneo's many dense jungles. When a baby orangutan’s mother is gunned down in cold blood by workers at the local palm oil plantation, it is up to them to rescue him. This act of kindness puts them on a path to reckon with their own culpability for the forest’s destruction and the perpetuation of the systems that enable it. 

This cruelty is not an isolated incident but rather part of a systemic assault on the natural world. Here a road is a creeping death and all its cargo, whether man or machine, could prove fatal. In the face of such destruction, community and family are the last line of defence.

Kéria’s family blurs traditional boundaries. Her household includes both inhabitants of the forest, such as her cousin Salaï (Martin Verset), who finds refuge in their home after the latest round of deforestation, and her father who works at the plantation. Complicating this web of relationships is the spectre of a mother, said to have been eaten by panthers, whose absence evolves into a narrative thread.  

This interweaving of family, community and environment finds a natural fit in stop-motion claymation. Through this medium, both characters and jungle are put on equal footing and made simultaneously personable and vulnerable, enabling moments of humour and an entry point for younger audiences. The handcrafted look of the clay conveys an easy familiarity and comfort, but also a creeping awareness of how creation and destruction rest in human hands. Cruelty finds its reflection in cuteness: upon sneezing, the scared baby orangutan is named Oshi and welcomed into Kéria’s home.

Stop-motion also adds a sense of strategy, with each exchange between humans and nature becoming one of careful negotiation. Barras uses sound to further reinforce this tension. In a soundscape built of gentle winds and rustling animals, the repeated sound of a ringtone proves a harsh intrusion while the rumble of an engine instills fear. It’s a reminder that a few miles away sits a palace built in the name of extraction, where men worship forms, ID cards and hierarchies of permission that urge them onwards. 

Savages carries multiple meanings; the term is a pejorative for the forest's inhabitants, yet viewed in action, the plantation workers become the monsters. Barras does not reclaim the word but interrogates its complexities alongside the economic structures underlying deforestation, with its victims offered jobs in destroying their own home. Working to live becomes permission to destroy oneself – a contradiction Savages acknowledges without fully exploring it.

Despite its formal confidence, the film struggles with focus. Core relationships remain underdeveloped; Kéria and Oshi form an immediate bond, but further relationships never deepen beyond their initial scenes. Its themes compete for attention, leaving each slightly underserved.

Barras crafts an engaging exploration of environmental contradictions in an ideal medium but ultimately sacrifices narrative depth for thematic breadth. Still, in its fragile clay world, Savages offers a timely reminder of our responsibility to the natural world and each other.