For the fourth year, UniFrance has joined forces with France Culture for the presentation of the International Students' Award, held as part of the France Culture Cinema Prizes program. This year, the winner is A Paris Education by Jean Paul Civeyrac. The awards ceremony was held on Sunday, May 19, at 11:00 a.m. at the UniFrance Terrace during the Cannes Film Festival.
The selection of finalists for this award was composed of five films chosen by UniFrance and France Culture. Thanks to the International Students' Award, whose winner is elected by foreign film students, many students abroad have had the chance to discover the work of renowned French filmmakers as well as new-generation directors.
The films in competition in 2019:
- Le Grand Bal by Laetitia Carton
- A Paris Education by Jean Paul Civeyrac
- Mutafukaz by Shojirou Nishimi and Run
- The Trouble-Shooter by Julien Guetta
- The Night Eats the World by Dominique Rocher
The students were able to watch the films, vote, and submit their reviews online between December 2018 and April 2019 courtesy of the secure access platform provided by our partner FestivalScope.
This initiative is part of a commitment to expanding the reach of French films to younger audiences outside our national borders, with the aim of attracting the audiences of tomorrow via a strategy that is 100% digital.
The 7 participating film schools and universities:
- The Barbican Young Programmers of the Barbican Center (London, UK)
- ESAV - École Supérieure d'Audiovisuel Marrakech (Marrakech, Morocco)
- ECAL - École Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne (Renens, Switzerland)
- Milano Civica Scuola di Cinema, (Milan, Italy)
- Universidad de Sevilla (Seville, Spain)
- PSE Institute School of Media (Phnom Penh, Cambodia)
- The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television (Tel Aviv, Israel)
The winning film was announced during the Cannes Film Festival on May 19 at the UniFrance Terrace, in the presence of the film's producers Frédéric Niedermayer (Moby Dick Films) and Michèle Halberstadt (ARP Sélection), as well as its distributor and sales agent Margaret Menegoz (Les Films du Losange). Margaret Menegoz was also awarded the France Culture Cinéma Consécration Prize at this event (see below).
We would also like to congratulate Pablo A. Maraña Jurado from the Universidad del Cine de Buenos Aires for his review of Le Grand Bal, which you can read here.
A reminder that in past years, film students voted to give the International Students' Award to Speak Up by Stéphane De Freitas and Ladj Ly (2018); The New Kid by Rudi Rosenberg (2017); Mustang by Deniz Gamze Ergüven, and Mother(s) by Maïmouna Doucouré (2016).
UniFrance would like to thank all of the film schools and universities that took part in this program, as well as France Culture and FestivalScope. We look forward to next year's fifth edition of the award!
France Culture also presented two other awards at this ceremony:
The France Culture Cinéma Consécration Prize, which was created in 2011, honors an outstanding figure in the movie industry for the high quality of his or her work and their strong commitment to the industry. This year, this honor was bestowed on the producer Margaret Menegoz in recognition of her work with the production company Les Films du Losange. Ms. Menegoz follows in the footsteps of previous winners Claire Denis (2018), Costa-Gavras (2017), Frederick Wiseman (2016), Abderrahmane Sissako (2015), Margarethe Von Trotta (2014), Pascale Ferran (2013), Cedric Kahn (2012), and Alexandre Astruc (2011).
The Prix France Culture Cinéma des Étudiants Prize is presented to an up-and-coming director of a film that received support from France Culture during the previous calendar year. This year's award went to Sunset by Laszlo Nemes. In past years, film students have chosen as their winners The Girl Without Hands by Sébastien Laudenbach (2017), Alexandre Nanau for Toto et ses sœurs (2016), and Jean-Charles Hue for Eat Your Bones (2015).
