Our Heroes

Our Heroes is a short film directed by Léo Grandperret that provides a critical look at social behavior during the coronavirus pandemic. The abrasive look offers an unflattering portrait of most of the characters, exposing conventionalisms, miseries, irresponsibility, selfishness, hypocrisy and more. The spectacle hits close to home, and this is not the authors’ fault, but their great merit. Not many authors venture into making their audience uncomfortable by putting a mirror in front of it, as necessary as it is in this particular case. Their work is to be commended.

Written by French artists Léo Grandperret and Martin Darondeau, Our Heroes features six characters, a tragicomedic approach and a focus on the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus as a trigger for internal and external conflicts.

Staged mostly inside a supermarket, good attention is dedicated to blocking, dialogues and the interaction of the various characters. Reactions are organic, with characters perceiving and listening before reacting. There is clearly a theater background in the quality acting and staging of the film.

Cinematography has been used to enhance the transmission of conflict. Tighter shots are employed to transmit the conflicts of the characters together with handheld cameras to increase visual rhythm.

Our Heroes intentionally provides some uncomfortable overtones, while removing disguises, unmasking characters and exposing truth through humor. This tragicomedy in a supermarket is an unusual and doubly necessary portrait of current pandemic times. To the authors’ merit, it won’t leave a single viewer indifferent.