The Day of the Crows

Deep in the woods, among towering trees and dense meadows, lives Pumpkin, a burly, ogre-like man, who towers like a giant over the tiny boy who is his only child. Raised like an animal since birth and knowing only the ways of the wild, the boy has been forbidden to venture beyond the edge of the forest to the place his father calls “The World Beyond.” So the nameless boy spends his days in isolation, honing his slingshot skills, eating small creatures, and confiding in his only friends: the half-human, half-animal spirits that occupy the strange forest that is his home. One day his father is injured, and the boy has no choice but to leave the woods in search of help. Entering a neighboring village, he befriends a young girl, Manon, and for the first time in his life begins to experience the wonders that human contact and civilization have to offer. Yet village life is not as harmonious as it first appears — and after discovering the truth about his family’s past, the boy gathers his courage and returns to the forest to confront his father. With tips of the hat to the enchanted forest worlds of Hayao Miyazaki and François Truffaut’s The Wild Child, this lushly animated film travels the blurred lines between animal and human, nature and civilization, and the realms of the living and of spirits. But underneath it all is a simple story of a father’s lost love and a boy’s brave struggle to recapture it.