EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based sales outfit Ginger & Fed is aiming to make a noise in Cannes with the acquisition of The Bird Singers, the debut feature from French director Mathieu Robin about two real-life childhood friends who found their voice in the eccentric world of competitive bird-calling.
The nature-driven coming-of-age drama stars François Damiens and Alexis Manenti and is produced by the prolific French outfit Mandarin & Cie.
The film is based on the book of the same name by real-life protagonists Jean Boucault and Johnny Rasse, whose shared childhood passion turned into a lifelong career imitating birds.
The Bird Singers kicks off in the 1980s and centres on two boys from different worlds in a small village in northern France’s Somme region who enter a bird-calling contest. The bird-calling friends are played by rising young actors at different ages alongside Manenti, who plays one boy’s father, and Damiens, a mentor to the other.
Production for the nature-based cinematography and bird footage kicked off in the Bay of Somme this month, with the cast set to join in early September. Apollo will release the film in France in 2027.
“I wanted to make a film that would inspire audiences to step outside, listen, feel the living world, and to reconnect with nature and their inner child,” said Robin. He described birdsong as a way for the protagonists “to escape their worlds and create a language of their own”.
Robin wrote the script alongside consultants Emmanuel Courcol and Irene Muscari, whose credits include French box office hit The Marching Band.
Ginger & Fed founder Sabine Chemaly described the film as “a rural Billy Elliot” and “a film about passing on traditions and our connection to the living world likely to resonate with an intergenerational audience.” She added: “The film opens our eyes to the steady decline in bird populations, the loss of our connection to nature, and, more broadly, the idea that animals and living creatures can heal humanity.”
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