Thursday, May 21, 2015

54th Semaine de la Critique Award Winners


Today was La Semaine de la Critique Award Ceremony and the screening of the closing film La Vie en grand by Mathieu Vadepied.

The big winner is the Latin American cinema as two feature films from the region won top awards.

Paulina (or La Patota) by Santiago Mitre is the big winner as won the top award, the Grand Prix.

Cesar Augusto Acevedo's La Tierra y la Sombra wins the SACD Award (Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques) that supports new authors with a cash prize and also the Visionary Award that rewards outstanding creativity and innovation.

Winners are in *LIGHT PURPLE.

As always I get lost reading about all films but to speed up the post here are the seven (7) films in the Selection of 1st or 2nd films.

(*) Dégradé, Arab et Tarazan Nasser, Palestine, France and Qatar
(*) Krisha, Trey Edward Shults, USA
*(*) La Tierra y la sombra (Land and Shade), César Augusto Acevedo, Colombia, France, Netherlands, Chile and Brazil Winner of the SACD Award and France 4 Visionary Award
(*) Mediterranea, Jonas Carpignano, Italy, France, USA and Germany
*(*) Ni le ciel, ni la terre (The Wakhan Front), Clément Cogitore, France and Belgium Winner of the Gan Foundation Support for Distribution Award
*(*) Paulina, Santiago Mitre, Argentina, Brasil and France Winner of the Grand Prix
(*) Sleeping Giant, Andrew Cividino, Canada

Special Screenings
Opening Night: Les Anarchistes, Elie Wajeman, France
(*) Closing Night: La Vie en grand (Learn by Heart), Mathieu Vadepied, France
(*) 차이나타운 Chainatawoon (Coin Locker Girl - aka Chinatown), Han Jun-hee, South Korea
(*) Les Deux amis, Louis Garrel, France

Short and Medium-Length Films
Alles Wird Gut (Everything will be Okay), Patrick Vollrath, Germany
Command Action, João Paulo Miranda, Brazil
La Fin du dragon (The Dragon's Demise), Marina Diaby, France
The Fox Exploits the Tiger's Might, Lucky Kuswandi, Indonesia
Love Comes Later, Sonejuhi Sinha, USA
Jeunesse des Loups-Garous (Monsters Turn Into Lovers), Yann Delattre, France
Pojkarna (Boys), Isabella Carbonell, Sweden
*Ramona, Andrei Cretulescu, Romania Winner of the Canal+ Award
Too Cool For School, Kevin Phillips, USA
*Varicella (Chickenpox), Fulvio Risuleo, Italy Winner of the Sony CineAlta Discovery Prize

Jury of the Grand Prize, Visionary Award and Discovery Prize
President: Ronit Elkabetz, director, screenwriter and actress, Israel
Katell Quillévéré, screenwriter and director, France
Peter Suschitzky, director of photography, UK
Andréa Picard, Toronto Festival programmer, Canada
Boyd van Hoeij, cinema journalist, Netherlands

(*) Compete for the Camera d'Or.

La Semaine de la Critique is a hub for emerging directors and it will continue to accompany the 10 short film talents by offering them to take part in the new program NEXT STEP, a training and supporting workshop which sets the path to feature film.

As a reminder, ALL feature films in the main selection are eligible to compete for the Camera d'Or, but there are three (3) more first films in the Special Screenings section.  In total La Semaine gives 10 contenders to the Camera d'Or. To read info and watch available trailers go @MOC or official site here that has info for each of the films in the selection.

Check the video with the announcement, it's in French with English subtitles.



The Program and Schedule



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5/4/15
Today organizers released the program and schedule of all films in La Semaine selection, you will find the document below and if you wish to check the schedule at the official site go here.

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4/20/15
A few minutes ago section organizers released the video with Charles Tesson, Semaine Artistic Director, announcing this year selection with films that could be strange/weird -as usual- but to my surprise there are some films that were in my long list and never imagined will end up in the Critics' Week.

In total, 1,750 shorts and 1,000 features were submitted for consideration. Among the 11 feature films in the selection, 9 are first flms and 2 are second films.

While Latin American cinema is not particularly well-represented in the Official Selection, the Critics' Week has two films from the region (Argentina and Colombia) and the same happens with Africa, with la Semaine having one co production from Qatar.  Still, la Semaine selection has a strong French flavor, which of course I do NOT mind at all, even when here there are some French films with "unusual" style that I wonder if I ever will watch (lol).

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