The films
Saint Omer
by Alice Diop and
Pacifiction
by Albert Serra are the joint winners of the Prix Louis-Delluc 2022, nicknamed the "Goncourt of cinema", announced Wednesday to AFP Sophie Avon, secretary general of the prize awarded each year by a college of critics.
They succeed Arthur Harari's
Onoda
, a humanist fresco on the madness of a Japanese soldier.
“From the start, these two films had the preferences of the jury. At the time of the vote, it was impossible to decide between them and the cinema needs to be supported. They are two magnificent films, in very different registers
,” said Ms. Avon.
Directed by Alice Diop,
Saint Omer
, already awarded at the Venice Film Festival, has been nominated by France to represent it at the 2023 Oscars, in the “international feature film” category.
Grand Jury Prize and First Film Prize at Venice, Alice Diop's film is inspired by a true story of a trial for infanticide.
A news story dating back to 2013.
Read alsoBuoyed by its success at the Mostra, Saint-Omer becomes France's candidate film for the Oscars
The film tells the story of Laurence Coly, played by Guslagie Malanda, a Senegalese immigrant accused of having killed her 15-month-old baby by abandoning her on a northern beach at rising tide.
Directed by Albert Serra with Benoît Magimel as headliner,
Pacifiction - Torment on the Islands
was in competition at the last Cannes Film Festival.
The film evokes the situation on the Polynesian island of Tahiti in the midst of rumors of nuclear tests.
The Louis-Delluc prize for first film went to
Falcon Lake
by Charlotte Lebon, a film which tells the story of a summer vacation in a cabin on the edge of a lake in Quebec haunted by a legend.
Made up of some twenty critics and personalities, under the chairmanship of Gilles Jacob, the former president of the Cannes Film Festival, the Louis-Delluc Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for French cinema, was founded in 1937 in tribute to Louis Delluc, the first French journalist specializing in cinema and founder of film clubs, who died at the age of 33.