‘For 18 years, I have been filming Pénélope, a young adult with autism. One day I opened the cupboard that contained DV tapes and Super 8 reels. My eyes almost popped out. These images had to be brought together. Penelope, My Love traces the journey of a mother and her daughter through the years. It tells of different stages: the shock of the diagnosis, the declaration of war, the abdication of arms, to finally accept and discover a different mode of existence.
This body of Pénélope, and a fortiori this body of the autistic person in social space, what place does it occupy and what place do we give it? What land can cinema invent to design a hospitable space, dream of a world allowing the invisible to become visible? Pénélope keeps cheering for what she is, I keep questioning who she is. The answer to the question is precisely in this endless quest. Everything is mirrored to me. So, isn’t it Pénélope who in turn tells me who I am?’
SCREENINGS & AWARDS
World Premiere: FID Marseille – July 2021
2021 Festival International du Film d’Education
2022 FIPADOC
2022 International Film Festival Rotterdam
2022 MoMA Doc Fortnight (US Premiere)
2022 Santa Barbara IFF
2022 FIFDH (Swiss Premiere)
2022 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (Greek Premiere)
2022 One World Romania (Romanian Premiere)
2022 DocsBarcelona (Spanish Premiere)
2022 Docaviv IDFF (Israeli Premiere)
2022 Krakow Film Festival (Polish Premiere)
2022 Biografilm Festival (Italian Premiere)
2022 Doc Edge Festival, New Zealand
2022 Maine International Film Festival
2022 BOSIFEST – Belgrade International Film Festival of People with Disabilities
2022 Chania Film Festival
2022 Escales Documentaires La Rochelle
2023 Victoria Film Festival
2023 Festival Imagésanté
2023 Riga Pasaules Film Festival
2024 PSY images FF
And more: La Casa Encendida
AWARDS
- Georges de Beauregard National Prize, FID Marseille 2021
- Renaud Victor Prize, FID Marseille 2021
- Best Director Award at Bosifest 2022
JURY STATEMENT
Is there a more difficult task than directing your own life drama for eighteen years where the leading role is your autistic daughter? A painfully honest autobiography, a story of motherly love and struggle that knows no bounds. Flawless direction, a film that is etched in memory.
- Best Documentary Award at Chania Film Festival 2022
- Prize of the Jury at Escales Documentaires La Rochelle 2022
PRESS
Reviews: The Guardian (EN), Cineuropa (EN), Ravage Digitaal (NL), Quinlan (IT), Universal Cinema (EN), Slant Magazine (EN), Le Polyester (FR), Libération (FR), Cahier du Cinéma (FR), Business Doc Europe, Screen Daily, Cineuropa
Interviews: Ciné-feuilles (FR), C7nema (PT), Cineuropa (EN), Business Doc Europe (EN)
RTS
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“Claire Doyon’s Pénélope My Love, a portrait of the director’s daughter, is one of the more striking films screening at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam. “
Diego Semerene, Slant Magazine
“one of the things that makes this essay film so poignant is that it exposes an open secret about parenthood in general: that the child we have always falls short of the idealized child that we wish we had, even when the child fits rather smoothly into normative expectations.”
Diego Semerene, Slant Magazine
***
“a total, liberating, healing act of cinema”
Giampiero Raganelli, Quinlan
DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY
Claire Doyon
After completing directing studies at the Fémis and Lee Strasberg School, Claire Doyon directed her first feature film Les Lionceaux in 2002, selected at La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival. She then directed several films: Le vent souffle où il veut, Kataï, Les Allées sombres, Arsenic, Chrishna/Ombwiri. These films were selected at international festivals such as the Locarno International Film Festival, The Venice Mostra, the Turin Film Festival, the Marseille International Film Festival, the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Côté Court in Pantin and for which she won prizes. She directed Pénélope, a film about a journey with her daughter with autism to the borders of Mongolia, which won the Renaud Victor Prize at the FID in Marseille.
Claire Doyon is the founder of MAIA, an experimental institute created in 2007, located in Paris, currently hosting 24 children and adolescents with autism. This school promotes an experimental pedagogy inspired by various sources and tools. Today Claire Doyon is responsible for innovative projects and initiatives for adults.
Filmography
CHRISHNA / OMBWIRI (2019) 13 min, documentary
ARSENIC (2017) 16 min, short fiction film
LES ALLÉES SOMBRES (2015) 22 min, fiction
PÉNÉLOPE (2012) 45 min, documentary
SON OF A GUN (2010) 12 min, fiction
KATAÏ (2009) 30 min, Ecce Films, fiction
LES ESPRITS (2006) short films with Joana Preiss, Fabien Almakiewic, and the group Sister Iodine.
SOLA PERDUTA ABANDONNATA (2008) 7 min
LES LIONCEAUX (2002) Feature film, 78 min
LE VENT SOUFFLE OU IL VEUT (1999) 30 min
PRODUCER’S BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY
Carole Chassaing
Tamara Films
carole@tamarafilms.com
+ 33 6 24 03 13 16
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Tamara Films is an independent production company created in 2012 by Carole Chassaing. Two partners joined her in 2020, Gérard Lacroix and Anaïs Feuillette.
Since its creation, Tamara Films has been developing documentaries and fiction at the same time. Two modes of production that differ, but are complementary, and in which we engage with the same intensity, driven above all by the strength of the projects. Within Tamara, we have chosen not to increase our productions disproportionately, in order to stay personally as close as possible with each of the films that we support. Tamara Films is a company on a human scale, which engages in projects that carry an aesthetic and values that inspire us.
Tamara Films
France
15 rue Erard
75012 Paris
carole@tamarafilms.com
+ 33 6 24 03 13 16
http://www.tamarafilms.com/
CO-PRODUCTION COMPANY
Micro Climat Studios
France
8 rue Bonouvrier
93100 Montreuil
thomas@microclimatstudios.com
+33 9 53 56 24 70
https://microclimatstudios.com
CREDITS
Direction, image Claire Doyon
Editing Raphaël Lefèvre
Writing consultants Fred Piet, Carla Bottiglieri
Sound Claire Doyon, Olivier Schwob
Sound editing Carole Verner
Producer Carole Chassaing
Mixing Gilles Benardeau
Calibration Graziella Zanoni
Production company Tamara Films
Co-production Micro Climat Studios
Links