Bambi

Sébastien Lifshitz : 2013

Bambi was born Jean-Pierre Pruvot in a tiny Algerian village in 1935. Even as a child, she refused to meet the expectations of her extended family, choosing instead to find a way to become the woman she always knew herself to be. A Cabaret Carrousel de Paris performance in Algiers in the 1950s proved to be all the encouragement she needed to emigrate to the French capital, assume the stage name of 'Bambi' and lead the life she longed for on the music-hall stages. Jean-Pierre, known since then as Marie-Pierre, is now 77 years old. Her extraordinary life of perpetual reinvention included twenty-five years as a French teacher at a variety of public secondary schools in France. Hers is a story of deep-seated confusion, painful rejection and impassioned courage. An impressive collage of photographs and chansons, archive footage, excerpts from feature films, Super-8 diary clips and visits to the places of her childhood provides a sensitive chronicle of her liberating transformation into a radiant transsexual woman. The film was the winner of the Teddy Award for Best Documentary when it premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2013.