An animated film tells how “Le Petit Nicolas” was born from the battered childhoods of Goscinny and Sempé

On one side a beaten urchin, brought his sketches to Paris under his arm; on the other, an exile whose family has been bruised by anti-Semitism: for Goscinny as for Sempé, creating the Little Nicholas was a way to heal his wounds. The creative process at the origin of the essential little hero of children’s literature is at the heart of the film Le Petit Nicolas, what are we waiting for to be happy?, in theaters Wednesday, October 12.

For this animated feature film which is primarily aimed at adults, directors Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre were able to meet Sempé before his death which occurred this summer, 45 years after that of René Goscinny.

Far from the idealized France of the 1950s, their film shows how they drew inspiration from their intimate wounds and their dented childhoods to create the mischievous little boy, best friend for generations of readers and sold 15 million copies.

When he met Sempé in the Paris of the 1950s, Goscinny was a young man who had already rolled over his head: he left as a child at the end of the 1920s in Argentina with his parents when anti-Semitism was rising in Europe, he then backpacked between the United States where he dreams of working with Walt Disney, and notably meets Morris, the creator of Lucky Luke, and France.

Sempé, he is a kid from a working-class family in Bordeaux, beaten by his stepfather and goes to Paris, drawing board under his arm, to try his luck. The love of drawing is therefore not the only thing that connects the two young men.

The creation of Little Nicholas“it’s a story of resilience, of two guys who had their childhood stolen, one by the Shoah and the other by an abusive stepfather, and who will create this dream childhood of Little Nicolas“, explained to AFP Benjamin Massoubre during the Annecy Festival.

The opportunity to show these two accomplices in a different way, pencil in hand, sometimes at home, sometimes on the terrace of a café, with the voices of Alain Chabat and Laurent Lafitte of the Comédie Française. Goscinny, appears there as a globetrotter, “very far from his image of a franchouillard in slippers“, while Sempé is a lover of jazz and music.

The first sketches, the choice of the first name, almost at random, thanks to an advertisement for the wine merchant “Nicolas”… The film traces the genesis of what will become one of the most read works of French heritage.

The directors, who worked hand in hand with René Goscinny’s daughter, Anne, were able to use the artists’ archives. And faithfully recreating the elegant line of Jean-Jacques Sempé, which had to be adapted to the screen, a challenge.

“To be faithful to his universe, we started from his drawings and we made files: restaurants, bars, parks, trees“, to constitute a database in which the designers drew, explains Amandine Fredon, the other director.

“It’s very hard to do Sempé”, recognizes the filmmaker. But the bet is successful: the film, which won the Cristal d’Or in June at the Annecy Animation Film Festival, will allow spectators to sit at the table where Jean- Jacques Sempé created this little boy who spoke so much to the unhappy child he had been.