Andréa Bescond brings all the courage and pent-up rage of her fierce, autobiographical one-woman show to the screen with Little Tickles, an inventive retelling of her personal experience of sexual abuse as a child. Peppered with moments of barefaced truth, fantasy, psychoanalysis and a healthy dose of interpretive dance, the film jumps back and forth in the life of Bescond’s alter ego, Odette, as she attempts to survive that painful experience, then tackle the utter wreck it has made of her life. The original show was honored with a prestigious Molière Award. The film premiered in competition in Cannes (Un Certain Regard) and won the Prix d’Ornano-Valenti for Best First French Film at the 2018 Deauville American Film Festival. It also nabbed César Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and a much-deserved prize for Best Supporting Actress Karin Viard, who gives a terrifying performance as Odette’s scathing, self-centered, brutally unsupportive mother.

Dancer/actor/writer/director Andréa Bescond has been dancing since she was three years old. After studying at the Conservatoire de Paris, she went on to work with such choreographers as Bill T. Jones and Bianca Li, and has performed in numerous musical theater productions. Actor/director Éric Métayer was trained in the fine arts, before falling in love with the theater and improv. His acting credits on stage and in film and television are extensive and he’s worked with such directors as Claude Lelouch, Alain Cavalier and Philippe de Broca. Métayer was honored with a 2008 Molière Award for his one-man show, Un monde fou. Bescond and Métayer have been married since 2012, and they first presented their one-woman show, Les Chatouilles (ou la danse de la colère), at the alternative Festival Off d’Avignon, where Bescond was honored with the Best Actress Award.