Le rire des moineaux is a fairy tale, the story of a 14-year-old boy growing up with his older sister in French Flanders, near Calais, in a dysfunctional, impoverished middle-class family.

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On a late summer evening, the siblings are walking through the fields when they see a stream of strangers passing by. That night, Jack undergoes the first manifestation of his physical condition: in the place where his heart should be, a hole appears. A void, a fleshy tunnel — you can pass your hand straight through where his heart once was.

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Each time he is moved, sees someone in pain, or is struck by something extraordinarily beautiful, blood-red pearls drip from the hole where his heart used to be. Sparrows are drawn to these exquisite, deep red pearls. In growing numbers, they gather around him, peck at the congealed pearls, and begin to laugh.

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The laughter of the sparrows casts a spell over the village, his family, and everyone around him. Only his sister Nina knows what is happening to him, and she insists he see a doctor. Jack refuses — he fears he’ll be declared insane.

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One day, Jack and Nina decide to block the path through the fields, forcing the strangers — who had been skirting the village in a wide arc — to walk straight through it. They make visible what others don’t want to see. One evening, as the strangers, the laughing sparrows, and the villagers gather to enjoy a garden concert by Nina, things spiral out of control, and the night ends in tragedy.

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This tragedy sharply defines everyone's position and forces them to make choices.

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It is a film about xenophobia, about the fear of radical wonder, and the struggle to make space for being deeply, bodily moved. A film about our tendency to appropriate, tame, or deny what is foreign to us.

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A virulent fairy tale, a hyperrealistic, life-affirming invitation to celebrate the volcanic power of the unknown.