CONTE DE QUARTIER

In a city in perpetual motion, seven characters are singled out from the faceless crowd in a neighbourhood under the onslaught of a contractor’s wrecking ball. Their paths cross during an eventful day. A rag doll with an inner secret is relayed from one character to another, creating a skein of tangled destinies. Inspired by tabloid news items, Urban Tale is a colourful yarn, an urban legend with violent undertones, a lively adventure at the crossroads of realism and fantasy.

Florence Miailhe used sand-and-oil-paint-on-glass animation and a digital camera to create Urban Tale, assembling the components of each shot by computer. The film’s graceful charm and disturbing strangeness and the multifaceted poetry of community solidarity are superimposed on the vortex of a dehumanizing city.