Declaration of War (2011) poster
2011 · drama

Declaration of War

Directed by Valérie Donzelli1h 40m2011
ElsewhereIMDb7.05kRT86%Metacritic73
  • sombre
  • intense
  • redemptive
Movie DNA

Sombre, kinetic, measured drama, grounded in texture. Redemptive, intimate, tender, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Roméo and Juliette are two young actors. They fall in love at first sight, move in together and make a baby. A love story and the founding of a home like millions of others. Except that their little boy, Adam, behaves abnormally. The young parents try hard to persuade themselves that everything is okay but, with the passing of time, they cannot delude themselves anymore: their son has a problem. From now on, war is declared. A war against illness. A war against Death. A war against despair.

Our read · Declaration of War (2011) reads as a sombre, kinetic, grounded drama entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, tender in temperature, redemptive in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
Where to watch
Not on streaming here right now.Check JustWatch Check Letterboxd
More info & search links
Fingerprint

The shape of Declaration of War

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a raw French story of young parents battling their child's serious illness.

ends bittersweetyou’ll feel glowing aftera rollercoastergrips by minute 6attention 3/5earns its lengthsubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upchild peril

Skip it tonightYou want to avoid films centered on a child's life-threatening illness.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Nearest by DNA

Eight films that read most like this one.

Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”

Your take
Rate it
star-clip-1-0star-clip-2-0star-clip-3-0star-clip-4-0star-clip-5-0
React
Discussion

Discussion

cmd enter to post

What does your Movie DNA look like?

Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.

Calibrate yourself