Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc

France, 1425. In the midst of the Hundred Years’ War, the young Jeannette, at the still tender age of 8, looks after her sheep in the small village of Domremy.

One day, she tells her friend Hauviette how she cannot bear to see the suffering caused by the English. Madame Gervaise, a nun, tries to reason with the young girl, but Jeannette is ready to take up arms for the salvation of souls and the liberation of the Kingdom of France. Carried by her faith, she will become Joan of Arc.

"Jeannette is a visionary embodiment of continuity —a fusion of spiritual exaltation, physical fury, defiance of authority, and political revolt.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker

"Eccentric, entrancing... as bold as it is lively and sweet... an enchanting fairy tale."

—Artforum


"Weird, wild... achieves an audacity that even the most traditional cinephiles should find hard to ignore." —Village Voice

"Dumont set out to smash the conventions of Joan’s tale, and does so brilliantly!" —Jewish Currents

"Sublime!" —EyeforFilm

"Dumont shows us the incongruity between girlish impetuousness -- a petulant if precocious devotion to her cause -- and the genuine rage at her nation's destruction which will serve as her hallmark." — Letterboxd

"Bruno Dumont’s new feature Jeannette, l’enfance de Jeanne d’Arc marks an unexpected and near-perfect synthesis of the French iconoclast’s many disparate interests and obsessions." —Jordan Cronk, Cinema Scope

"One of the true UFOs I have encountered in my ten years of Cannes attendance. So aberrant and ruthless is its pursuit of new forms of poetry, luminance and madness that it can be (and very much has been) confused for cretinism itself." — Filmmaker

Crew:
Director of Photography:
Guillaume Deffontaines

Editing:
Bruno Dumont
Basile Belkhiri

Music composer:
IGORRR

Choreographer:
Philippe Decouflé