Sep 14, 2018

'In Your Face' is a French Series Fighting Back Against Street Harassment - Exclusive Trailer

"I should have said that." That regret was the starting point for "In Your Face" after creator Eve Ceccarelli was sexually harassed by a man in a bar.

Her proposed series of micro-shorts empowers street harassment with humor. The film was presented yesterday at the 29th Cartoon Forum in Toulouse, France. Judging by the reaction at the Cartoon Forum, interest in the subject is high. There was standing room only at Ceccarelli's pitch, with the overflow crowd sitting on the steps; more than 230 people, including 52 investors, listened to the presentation, making it the seventh most attended pitch at the three-day event.

The general concept of the series was:

"Have you ever heard of street harassment? Repeatedly abusive and offensive remarks about being overweight, too black, gay, or wearing skirts that are too short are becoming harder and harder to miss. As a courtesy, of course.

Cartoon Brew has an exclusive first look at the teaser for "In Your Face," presented at Cartoon Forum:

After her bar experience, Ceccarelli, 27, was prepared to answer the next time she encountered harassment. 'It was a beautiful summer night. 'I was sitting on the banks of the Seine in Paris. It was hot and I was without a bra. A man sitting near me was staring at my breasts. After a few minutes I told him, 'I'm sorry.' He was really surprised, apologized and left."

Seccarelli, who graduated from Gobelins Weaving and La Poudrière and worked as a 2D animator on Funan, which won the feature film Cristal at this year's Annecy International Film Festival, searched online to read other accounts of such responses. She found a French-language group called "Répondons" ("Let's reply") created on Facebook and Tumblr.

"It was 2016, before the Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo movement," she says. 'Victims weren't talking as openly as they do now. My male friends hardly believed that I was frequently harassed on the subway. So I decided to make a series about it."

After trying to launch the project with other producers, she finally found the right partner: Don Quvoyra, a Paris-based company founded in 2005 by Virginie Giaquino and Joris Clerte that produces commercial animation commercial animation, short films (the César-nominated "La nuit américaine d'Angélique"), and web series ("La Petite mort"). The company is currently producing three television shows, one of which is Qui Quoi, a promising early childhood adaptation of a successful children's book, which was also presented at Cartoon Forum this week.

"In Your Face" is aimed at teenagers and adults. Each of the 30 episodes will be approximately 90 seconds long so that they can be more easily shared on social networks.

Ceccarelli hopes to build a team of screenwriters to find other stories. 'Something that goes beyond sexual harassment and feminism. In Your Face wants to be part of a global shift in the way people interact on the street. But we want to do it by using our weapon of choice: humor."

The pitch showed several story settings. Here are two of those slides:

"The story is very realistic, but the 2D animation is more dramatic, using pose to pose. The graphic style is sketchy and could be "cartoonish" if desired.

Co-produced with Rémy Reboullet of the Paris-based Bridges company, which produces documentaries like "Trucs de meufs (Girl Things)," a web animation about female sexuality, In Your Face The budget is US$440,000 (€380,000) for 30 episodes, which can be delivered by the end of 2019.

The producers are currently looking for broadcasters. It targets France Télévision's online platform for young people, Slash and Canal+. Because In Your Face isn't just for grumpy French people."