Le Petit Nicolas : Qu'est-ce qu'on attend pour être heureux ? (2022)

In 1955 Paris, longtime friends—the writer René Goscinny and the artist Jean-Jacques Sempé—decide to create Little Nicholas for a Sunday newspaper. As they develop the stories, Nicholas comes to life and talks with his creators. He asks them about their pasts, how they met, and how they found their way into the world of comics. Goscinny tells him about his childhood in Argentina, his early days in New York and meeting Morris while working on Lucky Luke, and his Jewish family, three members of whom died during the Second World War. Sempé, in turn, tells him how he arrived in Paris by enlisting in the army, which he had to leave because of his clumsiness; about his passion for jazz and for Ray Ventura, who performed the song “What Are We Waiting for to Be Happy?”; about his beginnings in newspapers and his meeting with Goscinny; and about his difficult childhood with an alcoholic father and a short-tempered mother, as well as his loving grandfather, who passed on his love of football. In 1977, Goscinny suddenly dies of a heart attack. In his apartment, Sempé sees Nicholas again. On the verge of tears, he tells him that a week before Goscinny’s death, the two had happily met up at a restaurant, even though they had not seen each other for years. Nicholas asks whether he will ever die, and Sempé reassures him: he will live forever through future generations, even after his creators have died. The two then play a piece of music in memory of their departed friend, while Nicholas’s plane flies over Paris.