Filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski, a highly respected figure in French cinema for almost 15 years, both in France and abroad, will receive a French Cinema Award from Unifrance, at a ceremony on January 16 at the French Ministry of Culture (by invitation).
Created in 2016 by Unifrance, the French Cinema Award (designed since 2018 by Maison Daum*) is intended to pay tribute to a film industry personality of international stature working to promote French cinema around the world.
Rebecca Zlotowski has traveled regularly in recent years, notably with Unifrance, to meet audiences and the international press, her films being widely distributed –and appreciated –outside French borders.
A graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and agrégée in modern letters, Rebecca Zlotowski is also a graduate of La fémis (Scenario department, class of 2007). During her studies, she directed, with Cyprien Vial, the short film Dans le Rang, which won the SACD Prize at the 2006Directors' Fortnight. For her graduation project, she wrote the screenplay for Dear Prudence, her debut feature film, which screened a few years later at Critics' Week, winning the Louis-Delluc Award for Best First Film. The film also earned Léa Seydoux a César nomination for Most Promising Actress in 2011.
Zlotowski reunited with Seydoux for her second film, Grand Central, presented in official selection at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard). Planetarium, her third feature, starring Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp, would have a near-simultaneous double world premiere in 2016, at TIFF and the Venice Film Festival , and would be released in 25 countries.
After An Easy Girl, which starred Zahia Dehar and turned stereotypes and preconceptions about femininity on their head (presented at Directors' Fortnight in 2019), Zlotowski directed the series Les Sauvages for Canal+, a political thriller co-created by Sabri Louatah, the author of the original novel. The series revealed a whole new generation of actors, now receiving top billing, such as Dali Benssalah, Souheila Yacoub, Shaïn Boumedine, Lyna Khoudri, and Sofiane Zermani.
In 2022, Other People's Children, starring Virginie Efira and Roschdy Zem, a highly intimate and personal tale of a blended family, was in Competition at the Venice Film Festival. After a great success in France (nearly 400,000 admissions), and the César for Best Actress for Virginie Efira, the film was distributed in some forty territories.
Rebecca Zlotowski has just finished shooting Vie privée, starring Jodie Foster, Virginie Efira, and Daniel Auteuil. The film will release in the year ahead.
Rebecca Zlotowski will soon be making her return to the small screen with Glam Squad, a series focusing on the daily lives of beauty professionals (hairdressers, stylists, make-up artists, and manicurists) working for the stars, developed for Prime Video.
The French Cinema Awards since 2016
2016
- Producers Aton Soumache and Dimitri Rassam (Le Petit Prince)
- Distributor Italian Andrea Occhipinti (Lucky Red)
2017
- Actress Isabelle Huppert
- German distributor Torsten Frehse (Neue Visionen)
- Chinese distributor La Peikang (China Film Group)
2018
- Actress Juliette Binoche
- Director of the Chinese Cinémathèque Sun Xianghui
- Spanish distributor Adolfo Blanco Lucas (A Contracorriente Films)
2019
- Directors Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano
2020
- Director Olivier Assayas
- Jane Shao, president and founder of Lumière Pavilions, a movie theater network in China
2023
- Actress Virginie Efira
2024
- Actor Melvil Poupaud
*Art is the visible expression of emotions, a universal language. It is even “made to disturb,” according to Braque. To evoke Daum is to awaken the reminiscence of an ancestral art. It also testifies to an immutable link with the artistic scene, through more than 400 collaborations (Armand, Braque, Dalí, Mesnager, or Kongo, to name but a few.) Through the French Cinema Award, the Maison Daum wished to highlight the brilliance of a magical piece representing the wings of an angel in white crystal, designed by Jean Lamore, a true symbol of the pure emotion of aesthetic pleasure.
