The Deauville American Film Festival is dedicating, for its 48th edition, young female directors and first contemplative films.
Aftersun
by Charlotte Wells and
War Pony
by Gina Gammell and Riley Keough, the actress granddaughter of Elvis Presley, won the lion's share of the prize list awarded by Arnaud Desplechin's jury on Saturday evening.
Coincidentally, these two feature films had been very noticed at the last Cannes festival where they had their previews.
To discover
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Read alsoWith
Aftersun
and
War Pony,
the Deauville festival explores the torments of the transition to adulthood
Chronicling the holidays in Turkey in the 1990s of a Scottish divorced father and his ten-year-old daughter,
Aftersun
won the Grand Prize and the Critics' Prize.
Sophie (the tornado Frankie Corio) immortalizes the best vacation of her life with her little camera without perceiving the silences of this beloved depressive sire (Paul Mescal,
Normal People
).
Years later, her digital archives take on another hue in this film (more British than Yankee) which questions memory and its reconstruction is inspired by the experiences of its director who lost her father as a teenager.
This deceptive summer torpor, where sky and sea merge, was one of the rare moments of tenderness and delicacy of a very dark festival, placed under the sign of the torments and anxieties of youth.
French viewers should discover
Aftersun
online on Mubi.
The auteur cinema platform has acquired the rights.
Read alsoIn Deauville, American cinema is displayed in worried mode
Gina Gammell made the trip to Deauville alone.
LOU BENOIST / AFP
Immersed in the miserable and ruthless daily life of a Sioux reserve in Dakota,
War Pony,
which will be released in theaters in 2023, leaves with the jury prize and that of the revelation of the Louis Roederer Foundation.
Crowned with the Golden Camera at Cannes, this feature film is inspired by testimonies of Amerindian friends by directors Riley Keough and Gina Gammell.
The film lifts the veil on the systemic and historical precariousness within the reserves by following two galley slaves, condemned by their origins to live only on trafficking, system D and expedients.
In his early twenties, Bill already has two children from two different companions, but tries to capture the American dream through work and poodle breeding.
With ten years younger on the clock, Matho refines his stature as a kingpin, digs into his father's stock of drugs to better resell it.
Then rejected by everyone and left to fend for himself, the schoolboy puts himself under the protection of a drug-dealing grandmother.
An almost documentary immersion, punctuated with esoteric and allegorical symbols,
War Pony
was shot over more than two years and recruited its heroes from the reserve.
The public chooses Emily The Criminal
The other joint prize of the jury
goes to
Palm Trees And Power Lines
by Jamie Dack, a summer chronicle of awakening to the desire of a teenager who feels trapped in her daily life.
But her older suitor isn't armed with the best of intentions.
The public prize
dubs John Patton Ford's more classic thriller
Emily The Criminal
, the portrait of a heroine (Aubrey Plaza) driven by debt and turning to crime.
One of the films of this oppressive and pessimistic competition with the least confusing and elliptical structure.
The Ornano-Valenti 2022 prize,
awarded each year by a jury of Anglo-Saxon journalists, and which rewards a first French film,
"with the aim of helping its recognition, promotion and export"
, goes to
Falcon Lake
by Charlotte Le Bon.