Claude Demers (born March 10, 1962) is a Canadian filmmaker from Montreal, Quebec. [1] He is most noted for his series of documentary films that were indirectly inspired by, or directly about, his experiences as an adoptee.
The birth son of an Italian Canadian father and a québécois mother, he was placed for adoption in infancy.
He directed a number of short films before releasing his feature debut, The Invention of Love (L'Invention de l'amour), in 2000. [2] He began his foray into documentary films inspired by his birth heritage in 2006 with Barbers: A Men's Story (Barbiers, Une histoire d'hommes), a film about the culture of Italian Canadian barbers in Montreal; [3] he followed up in 2009 with Ladies in Blue (Les dames en bleu), a film about women of his birth mother's generation who idolized pop chansonnier Michel Louvain. [4]
Where I'm From (D'ou je viens), released in 2014, began a series of much more personal films that more directly confronted his own experiences as an adoptee. [5] This series continued in 2019 with A Woman, My Mother (Une femme, ma mère), which addressed some of the unanswered questions he still had about his birth mother's life, [6] and in 2024 with Diary of a Father (Journal d'un père), which addressed the impact of both his birth and adoptive fathers on his own sense of fatherhood as parent to a daughter he cannot see as often as he would like, as she lives in another country with her mother. [7]
| Award | Year | Category | Work | Result | Ref(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genie Awards/Canadian Screen Awards | 2010 | Best Feature Length Documentary | Ladies in Blue (Les dames en bleu) | Nominated | [8] |
| 2021 | A Woman, My Mother (Une femme, ma mère) | Nominated | [9] | ||
| Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie | 2016 | Best Canadian Short Film | My Last Summer (Mon dernier été) | Won | |
| Montreal International Documentary Festival | 2019 | Grand Prize, National Feature | A Woman, My Mother (Une femme, ma mère) | Won | [10] |