French animator Sébastien Laudenbach’s new feature, Viva Carmen, offers a swooning, sketch-like retelling of Georges Bizet’s Carmen—reframing the opera’s doomed romance through the eyes of children in Seville. The French-language film premiered at the 2026 Can
When Sébastien Laudenbach’s characters step into the frame. they don’t so much “enter” as appear—outlined in thick black lines. then flooded with shifting swatches of color that feel alive before the story even starts. His newest feature, Viva Carmen, leans into that same luminous looseness as it tackles one of opera’s bleakest tales.
It’s not his first dark detour. Laudenbach previously debuted with 2016’s The Girl Without Hands. about a girl without hands. and in 2023 he released Chicken for Linda!. a modern-day musical adventure about a girl named Linda who really wants chicken for dinner. With Viva Carmen. the subject matter grows heavier—this time. a swooning and sketch-like distillation of Georges Bizet’s Carmen—but the tone keeps that familiar. self-possessed liveliness.
The film is French-language and begins in Spain circa 1820. Antonio. a blind knife-sharpener. returns to Seville. where local brigands and soldiers are delighted that his blades—dull in his absence—are sharp again. Antonio arrives with his sensitive tween apprentice Salvador (voiced by “Anatomy of a Fall” breakout Milo Machado-Graner). and Salvador is coming home for the first time since he was a child.
He doesn’t remember Carmen (voiced by Camélia Jordana). the beautiful Romani woman with green eyes he spots in the darkness by a river one night. But the story pivots quickly toward fate that arrives like a warning no one can quite interpret. Antonio can see the future of a knife as he sharpens it. and he discovers that a strapping young soldier named José will eventually stab Carmen with his dagger. Salvador’s naive attempt to prevent that fate sets the tragedy into motion anyway. José, the film reminds us, had never even met Carmen when the prophecy was foretold.
The coup de foudre between Carmen and José is condensed to a speed that makes Bizet’s opera feel strikingly nuanced in its depiction of lust. but it also underscores the panic of watching emotion accelerate faster than anyone can prepare for the outcome. Soundtracked by the jaunty clatter of castanets. the romance moves with the momentum of real desire—and with the dread of a world already careening toward disaster.
Laudenbach and co-writer Santiago Otheguy keep that forward thrust while also widening the lens. They recognize that kids only have so much time for romance. and they divert a large portion of the movie’s attention to Belén: a street-tough Seville girl who acts as a bridge between the naivete of Salvador’s fantasies and the unyielding reality of Carmen’s future. Belén is also given the chance to be a total badass with a bolo. and the film makes room for a few but fantastic action scenes.
As Salvatore and Belén try to live with the tension between the dictums of fate and failure. Viva Carmen emphasizes how Seville’s community of lost children might respond to the bloodshed around them. The mishegoss between Carmen and José remains the plot’s engine and shapes its rhythm. but it’s not the only melody in the room.
The adaptation nods to Bizet along the way. Laudenbach riffs on “Habanera” in the first of the film’s two musical numbers. then later stages a moonlit bonfire that unites Carmen’s friends in song. In that sequence. Carmen’s friends are distilled into pure feeling—clarity in motion that mocks the literalism of “Inside Out. ” as the film’s animation turns emotion into something you can almost see vibrating.
Even when the doomed lovers fall more into the background. the details do their own work: the shadows flicker across the walls of a narrow alley as Belén fights off witless soldiers; Antonio’s carving stone turns the entire screen gray; sparks from José’s knife pop off like shooting stars. And the sunset—anachronistically melting into a Monet painting—lands as a visual promise about beauty surviving the sadness to come.
There’s a line spoken in the film—“Fate is fate. It sucks.”—that lands like a blunt kid’s shrug in the middle of tragedy. The message beneath it is gentler. and it comes through in how the animation seems unfinished. with colors always looking for cracks in the lines around them. Belén’s cynicism is earned. but the film’s story keeps returning to the idea that past isn’t always prologue. and today’s failures don’t necessarily doom us to the tomorrow they seem to anticipate.
“They say a person is never truly dead if you still think about them,” someone consoles her. The movie’s hope—unpolished, stubborn, and alive—carries that thought forward to the end.
Viva Carmen is packed to the gills with more plot than it can handle, yet it sings through its details. Grade: B+.
Viva Carmen premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
Sébastien Laudenbach Viva Carmen Carmen Bizet animated film Cannes 2026 Milo Machado-Graner Camélia Jordana Belén Salvador Antonio Seville animation review