Swiss sales agency Lightdox has acquired worldwide rights to Claire Doyon’s feature documentary Pénélope, My Love, winner of Georges de Beauregard National Prize and Renaud Victor Prize at FID Marseille 2021, where it had its World Premiere earlier this month.
For 18 years, director Claire Doyon has been filming Pénélope, her daughter with autism. Composed of DV tapes, Super 8 reels and HD archives, Pénélope My Love traces the relationship between mother and daughter through different stages – the shock of the diagnosis, the fight against it, the resolve, the acceptance and discovery of a different mode of existence.
Pénélope, My Love is produced by Carole Chassaing of Paris-based Tamara Films and co-produced by Thomas Carillon of Micro Climat Studios (Fr).
Anna Berthollet, co-founder and CEO of Lightdox, comments: “Claire Doyon’s representation of motherhood…gentle and honest while also fierce and strong, touched us very deeply. The relationship between mother and daughter is beautifully portrayed in a film that is philosophical as well as intimate, which we are truly proud to work with.”
After completing directing studies at the Fémis and Lee Strasberg School, Claire Doyon directed her first feature film Les Lionceaux in 2002. She then directed several films: Le vent souffle où il veut; Kataï; Les Allées sombre; Arsenic; Chrishna/Ombwiri, which were selected at international festivals such as Locarno, Venice, Turin, Marseille International Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand and Côté Court in Pantin, and at which she won several prizes. In 2012 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 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.
