Opening Night Feature Film
Little Nicholas – Happy as can be

Le Petit Nicolas - Qu'est-ce qu'on attend pour être heureux ?


NY Premiere

Friday, January 27, 2023
7pm

Festival Opening Night Party from 8:30–9:30pm
FIAF Florence Gould Hall

All Ages



Dir. Amandine Fredon & Benjamin Massoubre, 2022, France, Luxembourg, Color. 82 min.
With the voices of Alain Chabat as René Goscinny and Laurent Laffite as Jean-Jacques Sempé
In French with English subtitles

In competition, 2023 César Awards
Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2022 – Cristal Winner Best Feature
Cannes Film Festival 2022 – Golden Camera Nominee

“It successfully combines biopic, origin story and Little Nicholas adventures into an irresistibly warmhearted delight.”Variety

In a display of ingenuity and imagination, co-directors Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre craft an animated biopic of Jean-Jacques Sempé and René Goscinny. Sempé and Goscinny are the talented authors behind Le Petit Nicolas, a children’s literary sensation with a beloved character that has enchanted generations of French readers since the 1960s. Little Nicholas comes to life “off the page” to mix the reality of Sempé’s and Goscinny’s lives with the fictitious world of Little Nicholas.

Young audiences will appreciate the humor and mischief of Little Nicholas, while adults will treasure the creative retelling of Sempé’s and Goscinny’s post-war world, as well as the relationships they forged in the U.S.—Goscinny with MAD Magazine, and Sempé with The New Yorker.

After the screening, join us for the festival’s Opening Night Party from 8:30–9:30pm in FIAF Tinker Auditorium.

Trailer

Related Talk: Discussion Petit Nicholas

Join us on January 28 at 2:30pm in the FIAF Skyroom for a fascinating conversation with Françoise Mouly, Artistic Director of the New Yorker, Gallerist Martine Gossieaux, as well as Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre, co-directors of Little Nicholas, for a discussion on the film and the legacy of Sempé.

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Related Exhibition: Signature Sempé

Signature Sempé, an exhibit of original artwork from Jean-Jacques Sempé, will also be on display in the FIAF Gallery during the festival and through April 7.

Learn More

About Benjamin Massoubre

He earned his stripes as a film editor.

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    • Most notably, Benjamin Massoubre has worked as a film editor on such films as I Lost my Body (Jérémy Clapin – Animation First 2020), Calamity Jane, and Long Way North (Rémi Chayé – Animation First 2021), the TV series Iron Man: Armored Adventures, The Summit of the Gods (Patrick Imbert – Animation First 2022) and Little Vampire (Joan Sfar – Animation First 2022). In 2020, he was nominated for an Eddie Award by the American Cinema Editors for his work on I Lost my Body. Little Nicholas is his first film as a director.

About Amandine Fredon

Amandine Fredon is a film director and screenwriter.

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    • After studying art, she naturally turned to animation, working mainly at the Folimage studio based in Valence for fifteen years. Fredon specializes in the production of animated series for television, including C’est bon with Jean Pierre Coffe, Ariol from the comics of Emmanuel Guibert and Marc Boutavant, Tu mourras moins bête (You’ll Die Less Stupid), and the adaptation of Marion Montaigne’s books for Arte. Little Nicholas is a her first feature film.