French actress Emmanuelle Béart will co-chair the jury of the Cinemania Francophone Film Festival with Quebec filmmaker Philippe Falardeau, La Presse has learned. The duo will chair the Visages de la francophonie competition, which will open with Cédric Kahn’s film, The Goldman Trial.
The other members of the jury for the Visages de la francophonie competition are actresses Anne-Élisabeth Bossé and Sophie Mousel, directors Manon Barbeau and Geneviève Albert, as well as screenwriter and director Éric K. Boulianne.
The co-presidency of the jury is a rule at Cinemania, recalls the general director of the festival, Guilhem Caillard. “Cinemania is here to create and maintain the permanent link that must exist between Quebec and another country of the French-speaking world, in this case France. »
At the end of the festival, which will take place from November 1 to 12, they will award four prizes: the TV5 Québec-Canada prize for best film, the Marc-André Lussier jury prize which rewards the cinematographic and cinephilic qualities that a work represents , the Sofitel Montréal prize for best performance and the SACD prize for best screenplay.
Was Emmanuelle Béart difficult to convince? “We had wanted to invite him for several years, but there was a gap in his schedule,” replies Guilhem Caillard. She came in 2000 to accompany Olivier Assayas’ film Les destines sentimentales, and I am very happy that she accepted our invitation. She is a great public figure and a lover of Quebec. »
Revealed in the film Manon des sources, by Claude Berri, released in 1986, Emmanuelle Béart has appeared in many successful films, including A Heart in Winter (Claude Sautet), I Don’t Kiss (André Téchiné), Mission Impossible (Brian De Palma), Hell (Claude Chabrol), Eight Women (François Ozon) and The Rehearsal (Catherine Corsini), to name just a few.
The pairing of the French star with Philippe Falardeau is no coincidence, Guilhem Caillard tells us.
“Emmanuelle is very involved in humanitarian projects, in causes, she is an activist, she was a UNICEF ambassador for ten years, she spoke about the scourge of incest in a documentary that she co-directed, A silence so loud; and in his own way, Philippe Falardeau is also someone committed, with his series Mégantic, his films The Good Lie or Le temps des framboises, which talk about foreign workers. »
The general director of Cinemania emphasizes the committed nature of the co-presidents of the jury to talk about the opening film of the festival, The Goldman Trial, by Cédric Kahn, which tells the story of the second trial of Pierre Goldman – brother of the songwriter -interpreter Jean-Jacques Goldman –, militant figure of the French left in the 1970s, arrested, then tried, for bank robberies.
“When I took over as director of Cinemania in 2011, Cédric Kahn was the first guest I received,” Guilhem Caillard tells us. It was for the film A Better Life, produced by Denise Robert, with Guillaume Canet, which Cédric had directed. So 12 years later, he returned to Quebec with The Goldman Trial, which is really excellent. »
Cédric Kahn’s film, which is released in theaters in France this Wednesday, was presented last May at the opening of the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. It will have its North American premiere at Cinemania on November 1, with the director in attendance.
“We are on the eve of the creation of the National Front, there is a lot of racism in France, and Pierre Goldman has proclaimed his innocence since the beginning of the affair and defended himself very eloquently,” he adds. .
The film will be released in theaters in Quebec on November 3 – the film is distributed here by Funfilm Distribution –, Guilhem Caillard confirms.
Alongside the Visages de la francophonie competition, which is the international component of the festival, eight films will compete in the Films du Québec competition. The jury for this section will be revealed on October 18, but we already know which films will be presented. Among them are You’ll Never Know, by Robin Aubert; The successor, by Xavier Legrand, with Marc-André Grondin and Yves Jacques; Sucré Seize, by Alexa-Jeanne Dubé; and Kanaval, by Henri Pardo.
A new “transversal” prize encompassing both competitions will be awarded to a woman. This will be the Elle Québec director prize.
