Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière

In an Andean village in Peru, in 1982, Tato, a 12-year-old boy is forced into exile when his family is threatened.

This animated film is above all a love story told with emotion and delicacy. A man loves a woman; both of them love literature. We discover the murmur of their lives, the harmony of their feelings—and we learn how their affection for novels and poetry marks their existence beyond death. The fruitful alliance of filmmaker Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s imagery and the words of Quebec poet Hélène Dorion results in a subtle, sensitive film that resonates in the viewer’s heart and mind. In its hybridization of styles and techniques, The Day Is Listening is also a most modern and daring work: its director has deftly expanded the spectrum of traditional hand-drawn animation, incorporating mosaics of real images that express a myriad of intertwining memories as well as the pulse of urban life.