White Bird (2024)

White Bird movie storyline. Based on the book by the best-selling author of Wonder, this uplifting movie shows how one act of kindness can live on forever. In R. J. Palacio’s bestselling collection of stories Auggie and Me, which expands on characters in Wonder, readers were introduced to Julian’s grandmother, Grandmère. Here, Palacio makes her graphic novel debut with Grandmère’s heartrending story: how she, a young Jewish girl, was hidden by a family in a Nazi-occupied French village during World War II; how the boy she and her classmates once shunned became her savior and best friend.

White Bird (marketed with the subtitle A Wonder Story) is a 2024 American coming-of-age period drama film directed by Marc Forster from a screenplay by Mark Bomback, based on the 2019 graphic novel of the same name by R. J. Palacio. Serving as both a prequel and sequel to Wonder (2017), the film stars Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson, and Helen Mirren, with Gheisar reprising his role as Julian from Wonder.

White Bird: A Wonder Story was initially scheduled to be released on September 16, 2022, but was later delayed to October 14, 2022. In September 2022, Lionsgate Films removed the film from its release schedule. The film, presented as a “sneak preview”, premiered at the 43rd San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on July 30, 2023, with a taped introduction by producer Lieberman. In December 2023, Lionsgate redated the film for October 4, 2024. White Bird was released in Italy, Croatia and Slovenia on January 4, 2024.

About the Story

After the events of Wonder, Julian has left Beecher Prep for good. He is visited by his grandmother Sara (whose professional name is Grandmère) from Paris, who, in response to Julian’s reflection about his need to be socially passive in order to fit in at his new school, tells him about her childhood as a young Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

In 1942, Sara evades being rounded up by the German troops and spends more than one year being hidden by her classmate Julien (one of whose legs is congenitally paralysed by poliomyelitis) in a barn of the house where he lives with his parents. She is instructed never to leave the barn to prevent being discovered by the neighbours suspected of being informants for the Germans. At night Julien teaches Sara what he has learned at school during the day. Affection between them grows into love.

In 1944 after liberation of Monte Cassino, Julien is stopped on his way to school at a German checkpoint by the Milice and thrown into the back of a lorry for transportation to a remote camp in the mountains. During an escape attempt by the other prisoners, he is shot dead. At the end of the war Sara is reunited with her father, her mother has been killed at KZ Auschwitz.

White Bird (2024)

Directed by: Marc Forster
Starring: Helen Mirren, Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson, Jo Stone-Fewings, Patsy Ferran, Stuart McQuarrie, Olivia Ross, Ishai Golan, Jem Matthews, Jordan Cramond
Screenplay by: Mark Bomback
Production Design by: Jennifer Williams
Cinematography by: Matthias Koenigswieser
Film Editing by: Matt Chessé
Costume Design by: Jenny Beavan
Set Decoration by: Iveta Kyjáková, Nora Sopková
Art Direction by: Petr Kunes, Jiri Matura
Music by: Thomas Newman
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films
Release Date: January 4, 2024 (Italy, Croatia), October 4, 2024 (United States)

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