Starbuck (2011) on Netflix
David Wozniak drives deliveries for his family's butcher shop. His girlfriend Valérie is pregnant, and 142 people he fathered through sperm donations have filed a lawsuit to learn his identity.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.2/1017,583 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes65%
Trailer
Plot summary
David Wozniak owes $80,000 to dangerous thugs and grows cannabis in his apartment to pay them off. He drives deliveries for his family's butcher shop. His girlfriend Valérie, a police officer, is pregnant and does not want him involved in their child's life. Then a lawyer from a fertility clinic tells him that donations he made years earlier, under the alias Starbuck, fathered 533 children, and that 142 of them are suing to make the clinic name him. Only that lawyer and his best friend, who takes his case, know the truth. With the plaintiffs' profiles in hand, David starts seeking his offspring out and helping them without revealing who he is.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Starbuck (2011)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film takes its title from Hanoverhill Starbuck, a Canadian Holstein bull prized by the Artificial Insemination Centre of Quebec for its genetics; it sired more than 200,000 cows through artificial insemination over its 19-year life.
- Guillaume Cochin, author of the 2007 novel Spermatofolie, and publisher Editions Jean-Claude Gawsewitch accused the writers of Starbuck of plagiarism; the filmmakers denied it and in September 2012 the publisher's lawyer filed a copyright suit in the French high court seeking 3 million Euros.
- Andi Arnovitz's 2013 artwork The Commerce of Infertility was inspired by Starbuck and the events the film is based on: 400 plastic babies with price tags, each encased in resin to resemble an ice cube, arranged in a grid.
- Starbuck's treatment of anonymous sperm donation sparked controversy, since large groups of donor children with the same biological father risk overrepresented genetic diseases and accidental incest, and at the time no North American law limited how many children one man could conceive through artificial insemination.
- The film's professional soccer scenes were shot at Saputo Stadium with the participation of the Montreal Impact soccer club, during the club's 19 September 2010 match against the Tampa Bay Rowdies.
