La Guerre des Lulus: a war film for children adapted from a famous comic strip

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Ten years after having graced us with a new version of La Guerre des Boutons, the French director Yann Samuell returns with La Guerre des Lulus. Adapted from the homonymous comic book series by Régis Hautière and Hardoc, the feature film takes place at the dawn of the First World War, in a village in Picardy.

Four inseparable friends, Lucas, Luigi, Lucien and Ludwig, form the Lulus gang. These orphans are always ready to join forces to face Octave’s rival band or to escape the surveillance of Abbé Turpin (François Damiens)… When the orphanage is urgently evacuated, the Lulus are missing.

Forgotten behind the enemy front line, they are left to fend for themselves in the midst of the conflict. Soon joined by Luce, a young girl separated from her parents, they decide at all costs to go to Switzerland, the “country never at war”… Here they are thrown with all the innocence and naivety of their age into an adventure for which nothing and no one prepared them!

Started in 2013, the comic book series consists of 8 volumes to date, the last being released in October 2022. The film is adapted from the first volume.

The film is led by Isabelle Carré, François Damiens, Alex Lutz, Ahmed Sylla, Didier Bourdon, Luc Schiltz and young people Tom Castaing, Léonard Fauquet-Van Overbeke, Mathys Gros, Paloma Lebeaut, Loup Pinard and Solal Devey.

What they will love: La Guerre des Lulus is a war film for children. An angle that differs from the usual films and shows us History under the gaze of these innocent beings who find themselves plunged in spite of themselves into full horror.

Yann Samuell delivers here a moving and often funny story which necessarily recalls The War of the Buttons and which will allow children to immerse themselves in History in a playful way and to realize the atrocity of war. The First World War being in the school program of Cycle 3.

Thibault Grabherr, Christine Tamalet – 2022 –SUPERPROD – WILD BUNCH – LES FILMS DU LEZARD – ELLE DRIVER – BIBIDUL PRODUCTIONS

From their meeting with Luce to their departure by train, through their various encounters and their misadventures in the trenches, the Lulus will become a real family.

emerge victorious from war

And that’s what pleased the director. In the film’s press kit, Yann Samuell explains: “In my eyes, war is a situation of degradation where you lose loved ones, material goods, but also hope, convictions and ambitions for the future.

What interested me in my approach is that the children in the film, who are orphans and who have nothing, will take the opposite path: the more they advance, the more they develop. They find an image of mother, father, grandfather and big brother during their meetings, and I wanted them to emerge as winners in the war.”

What can worry them : At each stage of their journey, the children are helped by a benevolent adult, whether it is their teacher, a desperate mother, a German soldier, a skirmisher or a clog maker. The adults will do everything possible to try to help the Lulus on their long journey to Switzerland, with a sometimes (or often) tragic outcome.

Thibault Grabherr, Christine Tamalet – 2022 –SUPERPROD – WILD BUNCH – LES FILMS DU LEZARD – ELLE DRIVER – BIBIDUL PRODUCTIONS

Between German soldiers, collaborators, children forcibly used as translators, and soldiers forced to kill enemies who did nothing personal to them, Lucas, Luigi, Lucien, Ludwig, and Luce are going to come face to face with the reality of war. and will have to grow quickly while keeping their spontaneity.

What they will keep inside them: With this film at the height of children, young viewers will identify with the heroes and better understand what they are going through.

The film will allow them to realize the abomination of war and the way in which men and teenagers were taken from their families to be sent to the front to fight the enemy.

“Children are able to reinvent themselves”

By keeping a playful tone, however, Yann Samuell manages to deliver a family film faithful to the spirit of the comic strip. He explains what he liked about the work of Régis Hautière: “I liked the rebound specific to childhood, this ability that children have to reinvent themselves, whatever the circumstances. As in The Night of the Hunter, they overcome the trials and are able to reset the counters to zero.”

At the end of La Guerre des Lulus, the spectator wants to continue living great adventures alongside them. While waiting to find out if a sequel is planned for the cinema, a piece of advice: rush to the comics!