Children of the Universe
Camille Budin
Switzerland | 2018 | 52 min
World premiere
Language : French
Subtitle : English
The sweet little faces show a certain perplexity. For this is no ordinary school experiment that the astrophysicist Stéphanie Juneau is offering them, asking out of the blue how these little blond heads imagine “the beginnings of everything.” But do the capacities for observation and imagination, specific to childhood, not constitute powerful forces for scientific knowledge? Grand et Petit follows the pupils of a primary school who have set off to discover the immensity of the universe in a fun way through role playing, poetic choreographies, walks in pristine mountainous nature, where the trees can become a representation of the stars and the forest, or of a galaxy. The knowing camera of Camille Budin captures their attempts to somehow acquire new knowledge and become aware of the “smallness” of men compared to the cosmic infinity that contains them. And their questions send us back, casually, to our own adult metaphysical anxieties about our place in “Life, the Universe and Everything”.
Emmanuel Chicon
