Noticias

Filmmaker and editorial cartoonist Aurel will follow up his César-winner “Josep” with “Desert,” an animated Western set in France’s Cevennes mountain range.

Pitched between a more traditional oater and an “Indiana Jones” style adventure and set in the late 19th century, “Desert” will follow a Mexico-born gunslinger exploring south-central France with a mysterious mission. Rediscovering his family’s ancestral land centuries after the religious wars forced those kinsmen to flee, our caballero soon steps in to protect a local clan from an oppressive landowner and his abusive henchmen.

“We want to bring together two universes that should have nothing to do with one another,” says the filmmaker.

The project will reunite much of the same creative team behind 2020’s award-winning “Josep,” among them screenwriter Jean-Louis Milesi and producer Serge Lalou of Les Films d’Ici Méditerranée, as well as animation studios Les Fées Spéciales in Montpellier and Tchack in Lille.

One of several animated biopics about to segue from the festival circuit to the big screen, “Josep” is a slim but engaging tribute to the legacy of Spanish artist Josep Bartolí (1910-95), a Catalonian republican whose Goya-esque drawings of his time in French concentration camps inspired the film’s Gallic helmer and art director Aurel (birth name Aurélien Froment), himself an acclaimed press illustrator and cartoonist. The film serves as a sharp reminder of the ignominious fate of some of the 500,000 Spanish refugees fleeing Franco’s anti-fascist forces in early 1939, and it also highlights the power of drawing to bear witness.

Like the forthcoming Danish animated documentary “Flee,” “Josep” was a selection of the 2020 Cannes Film Festival forced to cancel because of the coronavirus. It went on to win France’s César for best animated film and the European Film Award for best animated feature, as well as a slew of other festival prizes.

Awards ceremony will take place on January 19, 2021.

Italian director Filippo Meneghetti’s debut feature Two Of Us leads the nominations in the 26th edition of France’s Lumière awards, which were unveiled online today (December 14).

The awards, which are voted on by some 130 international correspondents hailing from 40 countries, are France’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.

In spite of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has delayed numerous releases this year, they have retained their traditional time slot and the awards ceremony will take place on January 19, 2021, in line with previous years.

Meneghetti’s Two Of Us is also France’s submission...

The 2020 ceremony will be streamed online from Berlin.

The European Film Awards has selected the four animation nominees for its 2020 online edition.

They are Rémy Chayé’s Calamity, A Childhood Of Martha Jane Cannary (Fr-Den); Aurel’s Josep (Fr-Bel-Sp); Sergio Pablos’ Klaus (Sp), and Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s The Nose Or The Conspiracy Of Mavericks (Rus).

Chayé’s Calamity, A Childhood Of Martha Jane Cannary depicts a young girl in the American Wild West in 1863 who is forced to grow up quickly and take care of her family. The film won the Cristal for best feature at Annecy Animation Festival in June.

‘Gagarine’ duo Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh win best director award.

Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s This Is Not A Burial, It’s A Resurrection has won the Golden Athena for best film at the Athens International Film Festival in Greece.

Along with the top award, which includes a cash prize of €2,000, the film picked up the newly-created Europa Film Festivals Award at the ceremony on Sunday (October 4).

This Is Not A Burial… was shot entirely in the director’s native Lesotho and centres on an 80-year-old widow who finds new purpose when her village is threatened with forced resettlement. It...

The sole French animated title in this year’s Cannes Official Selection and now screened by sales agent The Party Film Sales at next week’s Marché du Film, “Josep” marks the feature debut of editorial journalist Aurélien Froment. Better known as Aurel, the award-winning cartoonist has filed illustrated reports for French daily Le Monde since 2007, while authoring graphic novels about jazz and international politics.

He’s also spent the past decade developing this feature debut, which is co-produced out of Catalonia, a formally inventive, decade-spanning portrait of Catalan artist Josep Bartolí. A soldier against Franco, a lover of Frida Kahlo and victim of the Hollywood blacklist, Bartolí lived a life of epic sweep, only this film is no biopic. Instead, it focuses on Bartolí’s time in French internment camp shortly after the Spanish Civil War, and on the friendship he forged with Serge, the French gendarme who guarded...

Annecy– Paris-based sales agent Doc & Film International has picked up international rights to Aurélien Froment’s feature debut “Josep,” which was presented during a packed Wip session at the Annecy Festival on Tuesday.

The feature is an emotional and beautifully crafted portrait of Josep Bartolí, the Catalan illustrator, soldier, Hollywood stage designer, and painter who fought in the Spanish Civil War and fled to Mexico after escaping from a concentration camp. In the U.S. he was part of the influential 10th Street artists group, which included luminaries like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. After landing on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s blacklist during his tenure in Hollywood, Bartolí was forced to flee to Mexico. He died in New York at the age of 85, leaving a noteworthy and yet poorly recognized artistic legacy.

Bartolí’s amazing life journey inspired the film, a veritable love-story and homage to a passion for drawing.

Omar Sy, Maïwenn Best Film L'Apollonide – Souvenirs de la maison close / House of Tolerance by Bertrand Bonello * The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius L'Exercice de l'État by Pierre Schoeller Le Havre by Aki Kaurismaki Intouchables / Untouchable by Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache Best Director Bertrand Bonello for House of Tolerance Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist Aki Kaurismaki for Le Havre * Maiwenn for Polisse Pierre Schoeller for L'Exercice de l'État Best Actress * Bérénice Bejo in The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni in Les Bien-Aimés / Beloved by Christophe Honoré Valérie Donzelli in La Guerre est déclarée / Declaration of War by Valérie Donzelli Marina Fois, Karin Viard in Polisse by Maïwenn Clotilde Hesme in Angèle et Tony / Angèle and Tony d'Alix Delaporte Best Actor Jean Dujardin in The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius Olivier Gourmet in L'Exercice de l'État by Pierre Schoeller Joey Starr in Polisse by Maïwenn * Omar Sy in Untouchable d'Eric Toledano,...

The Artist, Incendies, Maïwenn and the other winners for the 2012 Prix Lumière Awards have been announced. The 17th Annual Prix Lumière Awards are “The Price of Enlightenment international criticism, sometimes also called Enlightenment Trophies” and were “created by leading producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier and U.S. journalist Edward Behr to honor French-language cinema from France and abroad. 200 journalists (international media correspondents in Paris) from around 50 countries vote each year to award their own prizes to members of the French film industry.”

The full listing of the 2012 Prix Lumière Awards winners is below.

Best Film

The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius

Best Foreign Film in French

Incendies, Denis Villeneuve, Canada

Best Director

Maïwenn for Polisse

Best Screenplay

Jean-Louis Milesi, Robert Guediguian for Les Neiges de Kilimandjaro (The Snows of Kilimanjaro)

Best Actress

Bérénice Bejo in The Artist

Best Actor

Omar Sy in Intouchables

Best Female Newcomer

Alice Barnolle in L’Apollonide, souvenirs...