White Bird (film)

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 was released in Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia on January 4, 2024; it is scheduled to be released in the United States by Lionsgate on October 4, 2024.

Plot
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 so as not to be 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 eventually grows into love.

In 1944 after the 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, but she finds out that her mother has been killed at KZ 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
 * 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

Development
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."

The film was produced by Todd Lieberman and David Hoberman from Mandeville Films, with Jeffrey Skoll and Robert Kissel from Participant serving as executive producers. Marc Forster was announced as director, with Mark Bomback writing and acting as executive producer.

Casting
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.

Filming
Principal photography commenced in February 2021 in the Czech Republic.


 * Locations gallery

Release
White Bird: A Wonder Story was initially scheduled for a wide release on September 16, 2022, but was later delayed to October 14, 2022. In September 2022, Lionsgate 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 January 2023, it was announced that White Bird was scheduled to debut in a limited release on August 18, 2023, followed by a wide release on August 25, 2023. 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. In December 2023, Lionsgate rescheduled the film for a wide release in the United States on October 4, 2024.

White Bird was released in Italy, Croatia, and Slovenia on January 4, 2024. On 18 January 2024, the film was released in Portugal, followed by its theatrical release in Poland on 2 February 2024 (with box office takings from Polish cinemas making up more than half of the film's worldwide gross revenue as of May 2024).

, more than 90% of the film's worldwide revenue originated from two countries: Italy ($845,028) and Poland ($1,257,423).

Reception
Writing for Variety, Dennis Harvey gave White Bird a positive review, saying that "Marc Forster’s film elevates somewhat contrived material with tastefully lyrical craftsmanship" and further adding, "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."

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 Helen 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."