Monday, October 25, 2021
Annie St-Pierre’s live-action short film Like The Ones I Used To Know (Les Grandes Claques) focuses on a father who goes to his former in-laws’ house to collect his children on Christmas Eve. This moving film which focuses on the themes of family and the first budding of empathy couldn’t have had a more timely release, more than a year into the pandemic. The 80’s nostalgia, exquisite art direction and endearing characters hit you right the holidays past feels. This film, helmed by women in key positions, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and has shown in more than 50 international festivals where it won 15 Awards including the Oscar-qualifying Award at Heartland Film: Indy Shorts International Film Festival and Best Direction at SXSW.
December 24, 1983, 10:50 p.m.; Julie and her cousins ate too much sugar, Santa Claus is late and Denis, alone in his car, is anxious at the idea of setting foot in his ex-in-laws’ house to pick up his children. Like The Ones I Used To Know (Les Grandes Claques) is an early coming-of-age that is as squeaky as it is poetic.
Director Annie St-Pierre has directed numerous films including the documentary Migration Amoureuse and Fermières (All that we make), a feature documentary. Apostle of independent cinema, she also collaborates as a scriptwriter, casting director, actress and producer with the Montreal film community that inspires her such as Matthew Rankin, Denis Côté and Monia Chokri. Annie is the co-producer of the two last Denis Côté films: Wilcox, Social Hygiene and is now in production of Le plein potential (Your Higher Self), a feature documentary on the universe of life-coaches around the world. She is also in development for a feature fiction she is writing.
Producers Sarah Mannering & Fanny Drew founded Colonelle Films alongside filmmaker Geneviève Dulude-De Celles. Their first short film The Cut won Best International Short in Sundance, their first documentary Welcome To F.L. premiered at TIFF and their first feature drama A Colony won a dozen of awards, including a Crystal Bear at the Berlinale and the Best Motion Picture Award at the Canadian Screen Awards. They won the 2018 Emerging Filmmakers Award at Hot Docs and the 2019 Emerging Producers award by the AQPM, Québec’s producers’ union.
Cinematographer Etienne Roussy worked with the late collective, Epopée, surrounded by filmmakers Hubert Caron-Guay and Rodrigue Jean. Etienne worked with Mathieu Laverdière on two documentaries State of the Moment, State of the World and the combined body of work Love in the time of Civil War which premiered at TIFF in 2014. He was awarded for Best Cinematography on the documentary Gulistan, Land of Roses directed by Zayne Akyol and in 2016, worked on the documentary Destierros directed by Hubert Caron-Guay. Roussy worked on the short film Jarvik directed by Emilie Mannering, which premiered at TIFF in 2019 in the official competition and also shared the role of cinematographer with Lena Mill-Reuillard on A Colony directed by Genevieve Dulude-De Celles.
The film is distributed worldwide by Canada’s h264, an integrated distribution studio supporting filmmakers and producers in the distribution of short films, feature film, aggregation, and discoverability. This one-of-a-kind studio has distributed several successful films including two recent Oscar®-nominated films. Likes The Ones I Used To Know (Les Grandes Claques) will be screening at a variety of film festivals including New Orleans Film Festival from Nov 5 - Nov 21st.
Watch trailer here: https://vimeo.com/493405484
