A child's struggle to make sense of death is the subject of Ponette, a remarkable French film that tells its story entirely from the viewpoint of a 4-year-old girl. After her mother is killed in a car accident, Ponette (Victoire Thivisol, who won Best Actress at the 1996 Venice Film Festival for her uncanny performance), has difficulty believing that death is permanent. In order to comprehend death, she also has to figure out how God operates, making her task doubly hard. Getting no support from her father, who tells her to knock off the God crap and live in the real world, Ponette tries various tactics to reach her dead mother and talk to her. At the boarding school she attends, a know-it-all classmate tells Ponette she must pass several tests of bravery in order to become a "child of God," which would then enable her to contact her mother. Other children offer her magic spells they believe will conjure up the dead. When none of these methods work, Ponette finally runs off to the cemetery, finds her mother's grave, and begins digging up the dirt with her hands, screaming, "Mommy! I'm here!" But despite this harrowing scene, eventually she finds the strength to endure the pain and go on with her life.