Sponsored by Unifrance and the AFCA, the UniFrance Export Prize honors efforts made by short film producers to promote French shorts in international markets. The prize was presented on June 12, 2018 in Annecy during the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
Credited with 89 film sales, 41 festival selections, and 9 awards around the world in 2016, Sacrebleu Productions takes over from last year's Export Prize winner, the production company Les Films du Nord.
Ron Dyens founded Sacrebleu Productions in 1999 when he was director of the movie theater L'Archipel Paris Ciné, and began producing short films in 2001. In parallel with his work as a producer, he has also directed five short films, which have been selected at over 300 film festivals.
The production company now has a slate of around one hundred films of diverse genres and formats, which have been selected at more than 1,500 film festivals in France and abroad, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Hiroshima, Annecy, Clermont-Ferrand, Sundance, and Ottawa , to name but a few.
In 2010, Sacrebleu Productions produced Free Radicals, a feature-length documentary by Pip Chodorov that traces the history of experimental cinema. It was released in France and the United States. In 2013, the company completed production for the series Portraits de voyages, a collection of twenty animated travel journals (co-produced with the Arte network).
From 2005, Sacrebleu became increasingly involved in international co-productions, first with Belgium (with La Boîte... Productions) for the film Imago... by Cédric Babouche, which was selected at La Semaine de la Critique - Cannes the same year. This was followed by co-productions with Germany, Italy, Poland, Japan, South Korea, Greece, Hungary, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Canada, Kosovo, and, soon, the United States.
In 2015, Sacrebleu produced their first feature-length animated film, Long Way North, directed by Rémi Chayé, which won multiple awards including the Audience Prize at Annecy and the Jean Renoir High School Students' Prize. Released in France in 2016, it attracted over 400,000 spectators. It was sold by UDI in more than thirty international markets.
Sacrebleu is currently completing post-production on the new feature film by Anca Damian, Marona's Fantastic Tale, as well as co-producing Rémi Chayé's latest film, Calamity, une enfance de Martha Jeanne Cannary, and will soon launch into production for the upcoming feature by Benoît Chieux.
Among the many prestigious awards and distinctions Sacrebleu Productions has received, we can mention the following:
- Palme d’Or for Barking Island (Serge Avédikian) – Cannes 2010
- Procirep Award for Best Short Film Producer – Clermont-Ferrand 2010
- Nomination in the Best Animated Short Film category for Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Bastien Dubois) – Oscars 2010
- Silver Bear for The Great Rabbit (Atsushi Wada) – Berlin 2012
- Crystal Award for Tram (Michaela Pavlátová) – Annecy 2012
- Procirep Award for Best Producer of Animated Television Content – 2013
- Crystal Award for Man on the Chair (Dahee Jeong) – Annecy 2014
- Best Animated Short Film Award for Sunday Lunch (Céline Devaux) – César Awards 2016
- Golden Lion for Best Short Film & nomination in the Best European Short Film category for You Will Be Fine (Céline Devaux) – Venice 2017
To celebrate the outstanding career of Ron Dyens and his production teams, five emblematic films produced by Sacrebleu Productions are available for viewing free of charge on the UniFrance website from June 13 until June 20, 2018:
