A crazy day in a neighbourhood under reconstruction: seven characters and a rag doll are swept up in a dizzying chain of events. Drawing on everyday tabloid violence, Conte de quartier is a lively adventure at the crossroads of realism and fantasy. It owes its poetry and disturbing strangeness to an animation technique using paint, sand and a digital camera, highlighted by Denis Colin's subtle musical score and Olivier Calvert's sound design. The film is a fireworks display to light up audiences' imaginations. A film without words.

“Sophie is good at school and Mum's thrilled. Jessica has her boyfriend and, anyway, she’s Jessica. Me? I dunno. A void. I suck.”
They’re all nuts. Her parents, who want to send her off to boarding school. Her new teacher, who expects her to read impossibly old books. Her fellow band members, who make her sing ridiculous lyrics and dress her up in a frilly white dress for their first show. Everyone seems to know what she should do and how she should act. And it’s not like 13-year-old Aurore has any fundamental problem with changing herself either. Who would want to be like this: unhappy, ugly and emotionally withdrawn? But the others don’t seem all that much happier to her either. She definitely doesn’t ever want to be as old, rundown and lonely as her mother. And so she prefers to stay the way she is, to observe and make her biting comments on whatever comes her way. berlinale 2016