Iron Boy

It is, in a word, lovely.

The impressive solo directing debut from Louis Clichy bolsters its intimate, small-scale story with detailed, nuanced characters and strikingly lovely 2D hand drawn animation.

Iron Boy is a timeless tale that pinpoints the very nature of humans to desire meaning and embrace individuality. It remains the most compelling animated film of the year sure to resonate with and entertain the entire family.

In an animation landscape that can often feel dominated by bigger studios like Pixar going back to what they’ve done before rather than trying anything formally or narratively new, Clichy offers a path forward.

What makes this hand-drawn and painted coming-of-ager stand out from other entries to the genre is Clichy’s superb attention to detail, especially the way he portays rugged country living in the 1980s, at a time when French agriculture was consolidating and family farms faced extinction.

Emotionally rich, narratively confident, and visually compelling, this is one of the better films of this year’s competitive selection, one that just happens to be so carefully drawn and crafted as to require the modality of animation to make its point.