The ecological movie “The Crusade”, directed by Louis Garrel with Lætitia Casta, will be released in theaters on Wednesday 22 December in France.This is the story of a couple overwhelmed by the environmental cause married by their son.

Can children save the world ?

Can Children Save the World? This is the question posed by La Croisade, a new film by and with Louis Garrel, where he co-stars with Laetitia Casta. At the cinema this Wednesday, December 22, in this film, the young Joseph (Joseph Engel) undertook to resell, without informing his parents (Laetitia Casta and Louis Garrel), everything that “is useless” in their bourgeois Parisian apartment . His mother’s Dior dress, his father’s collector’s watches, which “all give the same time!”, All their valuables go there … for a good cause: Joseph explains that the money will be used for a project secret, led by children around the world, to save the planet in the grip of climate change. Louis Garrel takes up his trio of favorite characters (Marianne, Abel and Joseph) and stages his couple and his family life (we see each other’s daughters in small roles) in a utopian fantasy in a Haussmanian apartment around a band children as tormented by their hormones as they are revolted by the inertia and egoism of adults and who wish to change the world concretely by organizing an action in Africa. If the idea of ​​La Croisade seems fashionable, it was nevertheless imagined a few years ago, in 2018, by the legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who died last February. The prolific writer, famous for his collaborations with Luis Buñuel, had submitted the idea to Louis Garrel.

Not a militant movie

Visionary, La Croisade is not a militant. “We did not want to show destroyers, but builders”, indicates Louis Garrel. A force and an energy that we find in The Crusade and that amazes Laeticia Casta: “What interests me in the film is this respect for the sensitivity of the generations to come.” The film shows that anything is possible, that they are bearers of hope. ” Louis Garrel thus asked his actors to be inspired by the phrasing of Greta Thunberg. Admiring “this very structured, very determined 12-year-old young woman with a super effective political strategy”, he asked the children to be inspired “by her poise and seriousness.” A film that brings together Designed over a three-year period, La Croisade also anticipated the coronavirus pandemic. A scene shows a fine particle alert. Faced with pollution, the French are invited to lock themselves in their homes. A scene written and shot just before the announcement of confinement in March 2020. “It was very weird,” says Laetitia Casta. “There was already talk on the radio about masks. Louis suddenly added it to the script. this funny Green Crusade, portrait of the Greta Thunberg generation – largely intended for young audiences, is eccentric but touching and funny.