MyFrenchFilmFestival achieved record figures once again this year, with 6.7 million views registered around the world, compared to 6.5 million in 2016.
This 2017 edition of the festival also marked the most successful year to date for the MyFrenchFilmFestival.com platform, with over 400,000 views registered, a significant rise over last year's 330,000 views.
As readers may recall, MyFrenchFilmFestival was also accessible on 37 high-profile partner platforms around the world, including the global platforms iTunes (in 91 territories), Google Play, DailyMotion, Amazon Instant Video, Windows Store, and MUBI, as well as FilmIn (Spain, Portugal, Mexico), Curzon Home Cinema (United Kingdom), TV5 Monde Cinema on Demand (United States), Orange (Romania), Movistar+ (Spain), Proximus (Belgium), ivi and Megogo (Russia, CIS), Qubit.tv (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala, Colombia, Equador), Cinepolis Klic (Mexico), ONET.pl (Poland), Etisalat (United Arab Emirates), SonyLIV (India), CableTV VOD (South Korea), Aoyama, Precine, Videx, Bonobo, Uplink Cloud, VideoMarket, and Gyao (Japan).
The following 5 countries registered the largest number of views (in descending order):
- Russia
- United States
- Mexico
- Brazil
- France
This year’s awards were presented to the winners on February 21, 2017, in Paris
Today, the awards for the biggest ever edition of the online French film festival, MyFrenchFilmFestival, were presented to the winners by Jean-Paul Salomé (UniFrance president) and Isabelle Giordano (UniFrance executive director).
- Filmmakers' Jury Award
The Filmmakers' Jury, led by Pablo Trapero and including Rebecca Zlotowski, Shlomi Elkabetz, Fabrice Du Welz, and Bertrand Bonello presented the Filmmakers' Jury Award to the following film:
The winning film benefits from a cash prize of €15,000 (€5,000 awarded to the director, €5,000 to the producer, and €5,000 to the sales agent).
This year for the first time, and as a special one-off event, the Filmmakers' Jury decided to honor a second film in the selection, with a Special Mention created to acknowledge the filmmaker's artistic vision in:
Marguerite et Julien by Valérie Donzelli
- International Press Award
The International Press Jury, comprising Pablo Scholz, David Jenkins, Elena Vasileva, Marc-André Lussier, and Michiko Yoshitake gave the International Press Award to the following films:
The New Kid by Rudi Rosenberg (feature film)
The Geneva Convention by Benoît Martin (short film)
- Lacoste Audience Award
This year, MyFrenchFilmFestival's audiences voted in droves (with over 50,000 votes received!). Audiences decided to give this award to the following films:
Ogres by Léa Fehner (feature)
A Town Called Panic: Back to School by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar (short film), presented in partnership with Wallonie-Bruxelles Images (WBI)
The winning films will be screened on Air France flights for a period of six months.
An edition marked by many unifying social events
In addition to the MyFrenchFilmFestival.com platform and our partner platforms, the festival provided numerous occasions for viewers to come together in person at various locations around the world to take advantage of new-generation French and French-language cinema!
Among these events, screenings of short films from the festival selection were held in Paris at the Atelier Renault, a site located on "the most beautiful avenue in the world": the famed Avenue des Champs-Élysées. These screenings also gave the French directors of the films an opportunity to engage directly with their audiences and exchange ideas in a convivial atmosphere in this iconic Parisian location.
Thanks to a partnership established with the Agence pour l’Enseignement Français à l’Etranger (AEFE)—the Agency for French Education Abroad—screenings were also held in around twenty schools across the globe, in cities such as Chicago, Zagreb, and Singapore.
Furthermore, with support from the international network of the Instituts français, films from the selection were presented on a wide screen in the Dominican Republic, Israel, Chile, Japan, Cuba, Kenya, Bosnia Herzegovina, and even Mexico.
A large number of Cultural Centers and associations supporting culture and cinema also took the initiative themselves of organizing public screenings in order to give audiences who are not familiar with French cinema to discover these production and discuss their views and reactions. One example is the Brazilian collective LORA, which hosted film screenings in the streets of Porto Alegre!
On the picture, from left to right : Simon Helloco (MyFrenchFilmFestival), Alison Valence,Titouan Labbé & Benoit Martin (actors and director, The Geneva Convention), Jean-Paul Salomé (President of UniFrance), Marion Bouvarel (actress, Ogres), Rudi Rosenberg (director, The New Kid), Nicolas Schmerkin (producer, A Town Called Panic: Back to School) Philippe Liégeois (producer, Ogres), Isabelle Giordano (UniFrance General Manager), François Fehner (actor, Ogres), Quentin Deleau (MyFrenchFilmFestival).
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