Commentary: Mirage
The hero of this adventure is a little Inuit boy. A very good opportunity to introduce students to these indigenous peoples, nomadic hunters from the Arctic regions of North America.
A particularly original storyline, moving characters. An adventure film full of magic and enchantment.
Among the very beautiful short films for children aged 3 and over in our selection.
Mirage is a little adventure film that draws on the imagination of classic explorer stories, with its unexplored lands, its hunters for natural riches and its mysterious remains of vanished civilizations, altars and magical keys. But its originality is the exploitation of the idea of antipodes. The place that the young Arctic inhabitant discovers communicates with a point in the opposite hemisphere: a tiny islet in the Pacific.
As usual, our fortuitous explorer will be grappling with forces (natural? magical?) that are beyond him. After a series of acrobatics marked by inversions (light/darkness, gravity pulling towards the sky, characters drawn into the air or crossing the “mirror” of the ice layer which maintains the border between the two points), everything stops with dawn and the spectacular emptying of part of the tropical waters above the ice floe.
The film sows clues throughout its adventures, but it is only at the very end, during the credits, that the name of this adventure (the famous Bermuda Triangle) is suggested, in the form of a suspended question: where does there remain a little mystery and the unknown on our Earth?
Questions about the film: Mirage
Understand the story and themes, express your feelings and develop critical thinking.
1What is special about the place where the boy arrives at the beginning?
It brings together remains of vehicles from very different places and periods.
2Can we locate the two places on Earth connected by the passage? By what clues?
The North Pole (ice floe, Eskimo), the South Pacific Ocean (island with tropical vegetation, shells).
3In what direction does the passage work?
From the Pacific Ocean to the ice floes.
4How can we explain that water can flow upwards?
It flows in the direction of the passage. The passage is magical, it reverses the physical conditions.
5How, in the end, is the passage closed?
Has the Southern Ocean completely emptied? Did the shellfish hunters' boat plug the hole? Was it dawn that stopped the magic of the passage?
6What is the role of the end credits images?
They present clues to interpret the passage as the Bermuda Triangle. They show elements of the legend.
7What is the Bermuda Triangle?
A place, located off the coast of the Bermuda archipelago (Caribbean), where it was believed that boats and planes regularly disappeared and for which many more or less scientific explanations have been imagined, to the point of creating a modern legend.
8What means do we have today to know if places like the one in the film exist?
We know practically the entire globe, through satellite or aerial observation and exploration expeditions.
9After the adventure described in the film, what is the consequence on the ice floe? and on the Pacific islet?
The corner of the ice floe became like a garbage bin for vehicles and it dried up (the ice was replaced by dust. We don't know about the islet in the ocean, but we can imagine that it also dried up.
Download the film's educational activities in PDF
Created with the support of the Ministry of National Education and the CNC.
Watching the film with the family, educational activities with parents at home and with teachers in class.
Theme
Dream
Genre & keywords
Friendship, mirage, magical, friendship, animals, fish, miraculous fishing
Recommended age
3 years old
Duration
9 min 19 s
Title
Mirage
Realization
Dana Terrace Iker Maidagan
Music
Alexandre Reumeurs Jorrit Kleijnen
