Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre

Who is Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre?

Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre is a Montreal-based filmmaker most notable for her animated documentary films.

After completing a BFA with honours in animation and an MFA in film production at Concordia University, she attended a Berlinale Talent Campus at the Berlin Film Festival in 2004, the Talent Lab at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007 and participated in a three-month residency in Japan in Sapporo in 2009.

Her films include Post-Partum, McLaren's Negatives, Passages, The Sapporo Project, Femelles, Flocons and Jutra. McLaren's Negatives, her first animated documentary, was shown in over 150 film festivals and received approximately 20 awards, including the Jutra Award for best animated film. She first became familiar with McLaren's work while studying at Concordia. Passages recounts the difficulties she had giving birth to her first child at Montreal's Hôpital Saint-Luc.

In 2004, Saint-Pierre founded MJSTP Films, her animation and documentary production company. There is a chapter devoted to her work in the 2010 book Animated Realism: A Behind The Scenes Look at the Animated Documentary Genre, published by Focal Press.