THE LIVING

Des Vivants - Raphaël Meltz, Louise Moaty & Simon Roussin - Hardcover book - 22 x 38 cm - 260 pages - 2021 - €29

 

 

Summer, 1940: France is occupied. Some refuse to accept this state of affairs. Deep in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, a few ethnologists gather, soon joined by people from every walk of life — lawyers, nuns, mechanics. Around Boris Vildé, Anatole Lewitsky, Yvonne Oddon, these visionaries lay the foundations for the struggle that will lead to Liberation: helping prisoners escape, smuggling people to England or Free France, and publishing an underground newspaper, Résistance. But these rebel spirits of the early days will soon be betrayed, turned in to the Gestapo, and in many cases, executed.
With The Living, Raphaël Meltz and Louise Moaty deliver a script of great richness and profound integrity. No dialogue was made up: every word the characters speak is their own. After extended research into countless documents from the era — memoirs, correspondence, firsthand accounts, interviews, newspapers — they set to writing their story, ceding center stage to these vanished voices, humbled by their strength. With a subtle mise-en-scène and masterfully controlled style, Simon Roussin brings these fragments of history back to life, faithful to their moments of larger-than-life drama. Together, they form powerful, in-depth, and moving fresco.
Too soon found out and too soon decimated, the Resistance network of the Musée de l’Homme has somewhat faded from collective memory. This extraordinry graphic novel, at once history, war novel, and magnificent epic, pays tribute to the men and women who heeded that astounding injunction: resist. Foolhardy daring, but also clear necessity — the only way to remain among the living.

 

 

- Goscinny Award 2021 ("best young script-writer")

- Listed in the Official Selection / Festival International de BD d’Angoulême 2022 (Fauves Awards)

- Listed for Prix du réel Award 2021 

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