Antoine dans les médias :

Première mondiale RIDM

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of joining AFB's Communications team to attend a screening of Antoine at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film follows Antoine Huang, a five-year-old boy who was born 100 days premature and lost his sight shortly after birth when his retina detached.[...]

Not a 'straight' documentary by any sense, the story of five-year-old Antoine Hoang is an immediate plunge into a world that's only very similar to our own.

Antoine (pictured, top left) was born blind and the first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning is open all the curtains in his Montreal apartment. Then he gets ready for school, where he is in kindergarten alongside other, sighted children. [...]

Antoine screens on Monday 4/27, Tuesday 4/28, and Friday 5/1 at the Tribeca Film Festival.)

In the dark, five-year-old Antoine Houang fumbles around to draw the blinds to let the morning light into his room. With a grand, “Eh, voillllàaaaaa!” he opens them to the bright daylight—which he senses, but cannot see. Antoine has been totally blind since shortly after his birth due to a prolonged lack of oxygen in his incubator (he was born 100 days too early). During this unfortunate episode, his retinas detached. In his “memoirs,” he tells us that he remembers some of this. The boy, clearly, vibrates on a high frequency of sense and emotion. Antoine 's producer, director and writer, Laura Bari, whose daughter Julietta is a school chum of Antoine, decided to partner with this precocious child. Together [...]

With Antoine, filmmaker Laura Bari treats us to a sensitive portrait of a six-year-old boy, one like any other, except that he's blind. We witness the struggles this causes as he learns to read and write Braille and use an adapted computer. But this isn't a film about the struggles of a blind child; instead, we're presented with the real and imaginary worlds of childhood. The filmmaker puts us on the level of children, and adults recede into the background. We follow Antoine in his classes, playing with friends, skating, and visiting family. We accompany him on imaginary excursions as a detective trying to solve the mystery of Madame Rouski's disappearance, listen to him as a radio host, and sit shotgun as he drives his parents' car. Antoine allows us access back into childhood. We do not pity Antoine or admire his struggle, because in the end, there really isn't one. Antoine is blind, but he's articulate, intelligent, and creative. He's simply a boy. And for the duration of the film, we enter into and experience his world.

Thom Large

Même si le nom Rubans Canards l'a un peu surprise par son incohérence, la réalisatrice d'Antoine, Laura Bari, est ravie que sa première oeuvre soit sélectionnée dans une section de documentaires «« nouvelle vague ». « Mon film, c'est du réalisme fantastique, il est un peu hybride, comme moi (rires), je suis Argentine de naissance, mais je vis à Montréal depuis 20 ans », explique-t-elle.

Dans ce film, le spectateur suit Antoine, un petit garcon aveugle d\'origine vietnamienne vivant à Montréal, au cours de la cinquième et sixième année de sa vie. Antoine enquête sur la disparition d'une certaine madame Rusky. Cet âge où la frontière entre le réel et l\'imaginaire est extrèmement mince passionne la réalisatrice. Non seulement elle met en scène un être exceptionnellement débrouillard malgré son lourd handicap, mais pour ce faire, elle a choisi un traitement cinématographique particulier. Elle a filmé du point de vue de l'enfant et l'a fait participer à la prise de son en lui donnant un petit microphone qu\'il a pu amener partout.

Julia Haurio

Hen Lasker's Seeds of Summer, a look at teenage girls in an Israeli combat camp, took the cutting-edge-oriented Doctape award. The Doctape jury also gave a special mention to Quebec filmmaker Laura Bari's Antoine, about a 6-year-old blind boy.

Bernard Perusse