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White Bird
White Bird
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Marc Forster
Screenplay by	Mark Bomback
Based on	White Bird: A Wonder Story; by R. J. Palacio
Produced by	Todd Lieberman; David Hoberman; R. J. Palacio;
Starring	Ariella Glaser; Orlando Schwerdt; Bryce Gheisar; Gillian Anderson; Helen Mirren;
Cinematography	Matthias Koenigswieser
Edited by	Matt Chessé
Music by	Thomas Newman
Production; companies	Participant; Kingdom Story Company; Media Capital Technologies; Lionsgate; Mandeville Films; 2DUX² Productions;
Distributed by	Lionsgate
Release dates	January 4, 2024 (International); October 4, 2024 (United States);
Running time	121 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$20 million
Box office	$8.5 million

White Bird (marketed with the subtitle A Wonder Story) is a 2024 American war 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 a sequel to Wonder (2017), it stars Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson, and Helen Mirren, with Gheisar reprising his role as Julian Albans from Wonder.

White Bird was released in Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia on January 4, 2024; it was released in the United States by Lionsgate on October 4, 2024,^[5] to positive reviews from critics.

Plot

After the events of Wonder, Julian has left Beecher Prep for good. He is visited by his grandmother, Sara, 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 Gestapo 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 so as not to be discovered by the neighbours suspected of being Gestapo or Milice informers. At night, Julien teaches Sara what he has learned at school during the day. Affection between them eventually grows into love.

In 1944 after the liberation of Monte Cassino, Julien is arrested by the Milice on his way to school at a checkpoint 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, but she finds out that her mother has been killed at Auschwitz.

Cast

Ariella Glaser as Sara Blum, a Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied France
Orlando Schwerdt as Julien Beaumier, Sara's polio-lamed classmate, in the barn of whose family Sara hides from the Germans
Bryce Gheisar as Julian Albans
Gillian Anderson as Vivienne Beaumier, Julien's mother
Helen Mirren as Grandmère, a renowned artist and Julian's grandmother
Patsy Ferran as Mlle Petitjean, Sara and Julien's teacher
Ishai Golan as Max Blum, Sara's father
Jem Matthews as Vincent
Stuart McQuarrie as Pastor Luc, the headmaster of Sara and Julien's school
Olivia Ross as Rose Blum, Sara's mother
Jo Stone-Fewings as Jean Paul Beaumier, Julien's father

Production

In October 2019, Lionsgate acquired the rights to R.J. Palacio's White Bird: A Wonder Story. Palacio said, "[t]he team at Lionsgate values artists and storytellers and has been crucial to expanding the fan community surrounding Wonder. They have been enormously supportive as I have been writing White Bird and I could not feel more secure that my new graphic novel is in the right creative hands at the right studio."^[6]

Todd Lieberman and David Hoberman from Mandeville Films served as producers, with Jeffrey Skoll and Robert Kissel from Participant as executive producers. Marc Forster was announced as director, with Mark Bomback writing and acting as executive producer.^[7]^[8]

In February 2021, it was reported that Helen Mirren, Gillian Anderson, Orlando Schwerdt, and Ariella Glaser joined the cast. Bryce Gheisar was confirmed to reprise his role as Julian from the 2017 film Wonder.^[9]

Principal photography commenced in February 2021 in the Czech Republic.^[9]

Release

White Bird: A Wonder Story was initially scheduled for a wide release on September 16, 2022,^[10] but was later delayed to October 14, 2022.^[11] In September 2022, Lionsgate removed the film from its release schedule.^[12] 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.^[13]

In January 2023, it was announced that White Bird would debut in a limited release on August 18, 2023, followed by a wide release on August 25, 2023.^[14] However, in July 2023, as a result of the SAG-AFTRA strike, Lionsgate pushed the release to an unspecified date in the fourth quarter of 2023.^[15] In December 2023, Lionsgate rescheduled the film for a wide release in the United States on October 4, 2024.^[16]

White Bird was released in Italy, Croatia, and Slovenia on January 4, 2024.^[5] On January 18, 2024, the film was released in Portugal, followed by its theatrical release in Poland on February 2, 2024.^[5]

Reception

Box office

As of November 13, 2024^[update], White Bird has grossed $5.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $3.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $8.5 million.^[4]^[3]

In the film's domestic opening weekend it made $1.5 million from 1,018 theaters, finishing seventh at the box office.^[2]

In Poland, the film debuted to $158,519 from 227 theaters, and went on to gross a total of $1.2 million.^[17]

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 74% of 47 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Packaging difficult subject matter into a digestible morality tale, White Bird is a soft-pedaled but ultimately moving drama fit for the whole family."^[18] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 54 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[19] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare average "A+" grade, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it an average five out of five stars.^[2]

Writing for Variety, Dennis Harvey gave a positive review, saying that "Marc Forster's film elevates somewhat contrived material with tastefully lyrical craftsmanship". He further added: "Though the occasional preachy, maudlin or trite note remains, Foster also manages to make “White Bird” less conspicuously conceived for tweens. He arrives at an unhurried yet sufficiently suspenseful pace that engrosses while side-stepping excess melodrama and sentimentality".^[20]

In his positive review, Keith Garlington of Keith & the Movies praised the film saying "“White Bird” navigates its solemn subjects with an open-hearted optimism, incisively exploring its themes of kindness, cruelty, forgiveness, and sacrifice. The film doesn’t say anything especially new, but it head-on confronts the cycles of hatred that have long plagued humanity. It leads to a powerful and forever relevant message that is enriched by top-to-bottom terrific performances and a director who never takes his finger off the human pulse."^[21]

Hannah Brown was more reserved in her review for The Jerusalem Post, describing the cast as "compelling" and praising the storyline for its power "to carry the drama", but criticising the film for its "moments of heavy kitsch toward the end" and crediting Mirren with saving White Bird single-handedly from being a much worse movie than it turned out to be in actuality. She concluded: "Despite its flaws, [the film] does not trivialize the Holocaust, and just barely manages to avoid being part of that mini-genre I have named 'Feel-Good Holocaust Films'. ... In White Bird, at least, it is clear that innocent people, even very cute ones, suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, and even paid with their lives. The two likable young leads and Mirren elevate this to a film that does have genuinely touching moments".^[22]