Alex Barbier, portrait
In production
Data sheet - Synopsis
Year : 2020
Length : 80 min
Language : Français
Coproducer : Zorobabel (Belgique)
Supports : Région Bourgogne Franche-Comté, CNC,
Procirep Angoa et Belgique
Director : Laura Petitjean
Synopsis :
Alex Barbier feared death as much as his physical degradation. Though he always warn me, saying :" I'll be dead before the end of your film !", that was not a part of my script.
Alex Barbier passed on January 29th, 2019. From 1974 until today, his work launched one of the most creative alternate movment of comic's universe. It testifies 40 years of graphic and narrative revolution before giving birth to the last artwork of this iconoclast in "neuvième art" : his graphic novel : Dernière Bande. Alex Barbier was ready to say farewell to comics trip thus he can completly devote to painting in his studio.
I was used to film him for five years when I heard about his death. I was taken aback. Now, I have to create with the loss of my documentary subject. To build a last storyline, fully mine, since Alex won't be here to respond anymore. Transcribe with animation, without any pathos or hagiographic excess, those last moments lived in the painter's intimity.
The director

Laura Petitjean
Firstly novelist and screenwriter, Laura Petitjean is a director of documentary films and an assistant for fiction projects (Fugazi by Laurent Michelet, Le Plombier and L'Ours noir by Méryl Fortunat-Rossi and Xavier Seron, Affaires courantes by Ian Menoyot.) She made Le Trou du souffleur, her first short film in 2009. In 2013, she created the artistic collective Têtes pressées where she organizes workshops of visual image education for a young audience. After a documentary film on the artistic work of Thierry Van Hassel, Corps perdu (2015), she is now starting a new documentary portrait dedicated to Alex Barbier.
Broadcast - Distribution
Broadcast : Bip TV
Distribution France : Novanima productions
distribution@novanima.com
Distribution Belgium : Zorobabel