LITTLE PEASANT FILM. Awarded the César for best first film in 2018, “Petit Paysan” tells the story of a farmer whose herd is doomed. Is it based on a true story?
[Mis à jour le 19 mai 2022 à 20h30] In 2018, Little Peasant won the César for best first film. This dramatic film, directed by Hubert Charuel, follows the day when a farmer’s life changes when he realizes that his herd of cows is doomed by an epidemic. A feature film whose precise plot is certainly not inspired by a specific true story, but which relates very real misfortunes encountered by many breeders. In the columns of The Midi Dispatch, Hubert Charuel recalled that he was himself the son of breeders, like the main character of Little Peasant performed by Swann Arlaud.
“The whole film was shot on my parents’ farm, which is no longer active today. It is often said that the first films were quite personal, being the only son of breeders and not having taken over the farm from my parents, I think there was the idea of telling the fantasy of what my life could have been if I hadn’t made a film.” The director of Little Peasant himself witnessed the mad cow crisis, “a moment which was very significant for my parents”, he recalls to the regional daily. “I will always remember my mother’s sentence when on television they were talking about the precautionary principle: ‘if it happens to us, I’ll kill myself’. It’s a sentence she said like that but I I realized that the death of an animal could be the annihilation of my universe.” Little Peasant is broadcast on France 3 this Thursday, May 19, 2022.
Synopsis – Pierre, in his thirties, is a dairy cow breeder. His life revolves around his farm, his veterinarian sister and his parents, whose business he took over. While the first cases of an epidemic are declared in France, Pierre discovers that one of his animals is infected. He cannot bring himself to lose his cows. He has nothing else and will go all the way to save them…