19/05/2026 - CANNES 2026: Louis Clichy delivers a wonderful animated film, with a crystal-clear and touching simplicity, about a young boy’s journey to break free from the grip of his destiny

"Do you think we need a son who’s going off the rails?" At ten years old, you have lofty dreams; you want to prove you’re grown up and, more often than not, make your parents proud of you. But for Christophe, at the start of the 1986–1987 school year, in the heart of the Beauce plains (France’s breadbasket) where his family runs a farm, everything goes off the rails, starting with his body, which leans so uncontrollably that he keeps falling over and smashes the farm’s tractor during his first driving lesson. It is this very endearing pre-teen whose life Louis Clichy has chosen to chronicle over three years in the miraculous Iron Boy, a little gem of an animated film unveiled in the Un Certain Regard section of the 79th Cannes Film Festival.

"Talk about a back brace!" It’s a Milwaukee metal brace that covers him right up to his chin - earning him plenty of snide remarks at school ("Robocop") and leaving him completely isolated - that Christophe now has to wear round the clock. It becomes a real burden that the boy (an occasional choirboy) finds hard to bear, both physically and psychologically, but which nevertheless opens up an unexpected escape route for him: becoming the page-turner for Michel, the kind-hearted organist at the church in Neuvy-en-Beauce. This escape gives him a new way of seeing the world, which, over time, turns into an in-depth apprenticeship in music, whilst the total lack of communication with his father (whose heavily indebted farm is on a knife-edge, at the mercy of the harvest) reaches new heights. As Christophe approaches his 13th birthday, there is now a shooting star, Clara, who makes his heart beat faster… And secretly, the boy has also discovered a sort of superpower… But in life, do we always get to choose what we want?

With masterful control over the pace of his narrative (a screenplay co-written with Franck Salomé) – which moves forward at a steady pace, remaining firmly focused on its protagonist – Louis Clichy directs a delightful film, as moving as Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem (which plays a role in the plot) and as funny as the awkward transition into adolescence can sometimes be. But above all, thanks to the simple purity of its animation, Iron Boy unfolds a fantastical, celestial and earthly poetry of reality, which does not prevent it from addressing serious subjects with subtle touches (vocation, the sword of Damocles that is agricultural profitability, seed experiments, the manoeuvring of agricultural cooperatives, paternal and filial bonds, rural life with its bicycles and bus stops, etc.). The filmmaker approaches these themes prone to sadness with such empathetic gentleness that he opens up a horizon of levitation to all the hardships.

Iron Boy was produced by company Eddy Cinema (France)  and co-produced by Rhône-Alpes Cinéma (France) and Beside Productions (Belgium). Playtime handles international sales.

(Translated from French)