This is a film that promises to be absolutely moving. Wednesday April 24, 2024, Olivier Casas unveils the film to the public Brothers with Mathieu Kassovitz and Yvan Attal. A film which tells the true story of two brothers, Michel and Patrice, aged 5 and 7. In 1948, the two boys were abandoned by their mother and decided to flee into the forest. A place where they will manage to survive and even live, for more than seven years because no adult has gone looking for them. A strong brotherly bond is created and their story will be tinged with many twists and turns. On the occasion of the release of the film, the two protagonists of the story, Michel and Patrice de Robert, spoke in the columns of Parisian and returned to this moving story. It all started when the two children went to summer camp in the summer of 1948. At the start of the school year, while all the children returned to their families, their mother never showed up. They remain in the colony for several months until the owner commits suicide. They then decide to run away, for fear of being arrested. Patrice, the tallest, goes hunting, while Michel builds cabins: “I made us cocoons to protect us from the wind and the cold” he explains to our colleagues. They make clothes from fabrics from abandoned car seats to avoid the cold, “the worst”according to them.
Michel de Robert: “In addition to the cold, what eats away at us is feeling that we don’t exist”
Of these years in the forest, the two brothers keep very good memories, that of the “freedom” : “No one told us: It’s time to go to bed, to do this or that… It was wonderful. Patrice said that we started our lives with the best, with the end. We held on because we developed adaptation skills. And especially because we had each other” explains the youngest. A period during which, despite the absence of care, the two brothers never fell ill: “We didn’t see anyone so we never caught nor chicken pox neither whooping cough. Of course, we had colds and we vomited sometimes because we ate poorly, but we didn’t have anything serious.”
Despite everything, the doctors discovered sterility in Patrice. “He was more affected than me because he protected me: when he brought food, he always served me before him, underlines his younger brother with emotion. It was not for nothing that Pat became a paramedic, then a clinic director: he continued to take care of others, to save lives.” confides Michel de Robert. During these years, they were confronted with encounters, notably pilgrims: “We were no one’s children and no one wanted to take care of us. No one was looking for us. After the war, there were millions of orphans in Europe. In addition to the cold, which is eating away at us, it’s feeling that we don’t exist”. Touching confidences.