After augmenting its library with 27 films from the catalog of troubled distributor Christal Films, Seville Pictures says it is hiring the company’s president Christian Larouche.

Christal, best known for releasing recent Quebec box-office hits including Les 3 p’tits cochons and ¿ vos marques…Party!, filed for bankruptcy protection this spring.

‘Mr. Larouche will be working with us in some capacity,’ Seville spokeswoman Geneviève Robitaille told Playback Daily, although she was unable to provide details.

Christal Films Distribution secured court protection from its creditors in mid-May, a year after it parted ways with its partners Maple Pictures and Lionsgate.

Maple and Lionsgate shifted the releasing of their titles in Quebec from their partnership with Larouche to rival Seville. As a result, Christal lost much of its product flow and bank financing.

Layoffs at the Montreal-based distributor followed, as Christal continued to lose titles, including Martin Gero’s Young People Fucking and Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights.

Films Seville obtained from Christal include Philippe Falardeau’s comedy C’est pas moi, je le jure!, (It’s Not Me I Swear), which will screen at TIFF, and copros Mr. Nobody, starring Sarah Polley, and Afterwards, featuring John Malkovich and Evangeline Lilly.