To the Woods

Plot

A summer night, in a red house with blue shutters bordered by the forest. We hear the river flowing from the room where Sister, four years old, wakes Brother, ten years old. Because she has decided: tonight they will go swimming. Through the open window, the two children slip into the darkness. They slip between flowers, brambles, trees... And finally it is the water, the reflection of the stars, their two bodies at rest. But in the distance the storm is rumbling. It is already necessary to return. Brother and Sister go hand in hand. Suddenly, Brother disappears. Sister chases him, runs out of breath, spins around, despairs. Is it a game of hide-and-seek? A trick of the forest? Or is it her memory which, years later, plays a cruel trick on her ?

About To the Woods

To the Woods (French: Une fugue) is a French animated short film, directed by Agnès Patron and released in 2025. The film depicts a woman's hazy and fragmented memories of going into the forest with her brother as a child, becoming increasingly abstract as the film suggests, without ever explicitly depicting, that the brother may have died in the forest. The film premiered in the Cannes Critics' Week program at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It was later screened at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Animated Short Film.

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