The Sweater

The Sweater (1980)

Le chandail

Roch Carrier recounts the most mortifying moment of his childhood. At a time when all his friends worshipped Maurice "Rocket" Richard and wore his number 9 Canadiens hockey jersey, the boy was mistakenly sent a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey from Eaton's. Unable to convince his mother to send it back, he must face his friends wearing the colours of the opposing team. This animated short, based on the book The Hockey Sweater, is an NFB classic that appeals to hockey lovers of all ages.

Date of release
1980-08-23
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (22)
Runtime
10m
Genres
Family, Animation
Director
Sheldon Cohen

Casting

Interesting facts

The Hockey Sweater is a short story by Canadian author Roch Carrier and translated to English by Sheila Fischman. It was originally published in 1979 under the title "Une abominable feuille d'érable sur la glace". It was adapted into an animated short called The Sweater by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in 1980 and illustrated by Sheldon Cohen.

Background

In the aftermath of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, tensions between francophones within the province and anglophones escalated as a provincial movement, led by the governing Parti Québécois, to separate from Canada reached its peak in the late 1970s.

Carrier spent several weeks trying to answer the question, ultimately producing what he described as a "flat essay" that was "dull as an editorial in a newspaper". Three days before his deadline, Carrier informed the CBC that he would not be able to complete the project. He was told that the network had already booked studio time for him and had been promoting his appearance.

Considering what to write, Carrier thought of his own childhood. He stated in an interview that he began thinking of "when was it that I felt I was really myself? And I remember it was when I put on my skates and my Eaton catalogues on my legs, and I stood up, and I was taller than my mom, and I had a stick in my hands, so I was stronger than my brother, and I felt that I was little me.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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