Director's Works
&Daughter, A Festive Tale François Larpin
François started his career as a music video producer at Iconoclast in Paris before moving to London. Between 2015 and 2020, he produced over 100 films (commercials, music videos, documentaries and shorts). He collaborated with directors such as Asif Kapadia, Romain Gavras, François Rousselet, Oscar Hudson and The Blaze. His productions received a Film Grand Prix in Cannes, UKMVAs and British Arrows. In 2020, he launched the Franco-British production company Voodoo Pictures. In 2022, François released Surfaces, his first short film as a writer-director. The film was awarded Best Director at Universo Corso and Best Short Film at the Paris International Short Film Festival. In 2023, he released on Nowness Varnishing Days, a documentary about the graffiti writers of the French crew Moderne Jazz. He is currently writing his first feature film.
The key idea for A Festive Tale was to create a campaign that conveyed the value of the knitwear brand: Authenticity, Quality, Tradition and a twist of quirkiness. The creative team at Voodoo Pictures suggested the idea of a sheep appearing absurdly as our hero prepares for the Holidays. I developed the idea in a series of three short films. Each episode depicts one stage of the Christmas preparation.
It felt important to enhance the Christmas atmosphere without falling into a commercial aesthetic. The films had to convey an elegant and absurd atmosphere. Considering the budget and schedule constraints, we had to limit ourselves to one talent and one location. As the concept and set up are very stripped back, we had to make sure that each element on camera felt right. We scouted dozens of houses before finding the right one, travelled to the Midlands to find Minnie, the sheep and worked with an amazing casting director (Concorde Casting) who recommended the amazing Elfie Reigate.
In order to enhance the absurd tone of the films, I chose to limit the number of camera angles per episode. Each film has a maximum of three camera angles. This setup is inspired by the work of Roy Andersson whose vignettes rarely use more than 2 camera angles. The slow pacing enhances the absurdity of the action. Minimising the number of camera angles also permitted us to craft every shot while achieving to shoot 3 videos in a day.
We invested every penny of the budget to shoot on 35 mm. Our ambition was to push the quality of the craft as far as we could despite the budget constraints. Celluloid elevates the quality of the picture and enhances the values of elegance, quality and tradition conveyed by the client. I'm very grateful to the client and the team that we got to shoot these films on 35mm. It took a village.
