At the 43rd Festival Tous Courts, the films The Juggler by Jennifer Fanjeaux and Windows by Elsa Pennachio and Étienne de Villars received the two 2025 Unifrance Awards in Aix-en-Provence.
The Unifrance Award of the Official Competition
One of fifty films in the International Competition, The Juggler stars the young Louis Béliveau (Raoul) and Pascal Tagnati (Serge) and explores the complexity of father-son relationships with subtlety and a certain tenderness.
Raoul, a young teenager, is waiting for Serge, with whom he is to spend the weekend. Torn between his impatience to reconnect with this man he knows little about and his contempt for his atypical, crazy father, who has just been released from prison, Raoul will have to find his way during a road trip through the shallows of his childhood ponds.
The Unifrance Award of the Experimental Competition
Twenty-five films competed this year in this competition, which offers visibility for alternative, avant-garde forms. Often described as unique, these works are nonetheless films in their own right and invite us to discover personal projects that go against the grain of traditional cinema.
The Unifrance Award for Best Experimental Film went to Windows. Conceived and directed, during a residency at the Studio Image en Mouvement at Baumettes Prison, by Elsa Pennachio and Étienne de Villars and co-written with inmates training in film and audiovisual production.
A model of a building and a “rear window” overlooking a courtyard are the set pieces of an imaginary apartment block through which the inmates, anonymously, reveal themselves, let us hear their inner voices, evoke their past, or imagine their future. In a suspended moment in time, an opening to the outside world allows each person to forget their daily lives and better reveal their humanity.
The French films in the awards line-up at the 43th edition
- Youth Jury Award: Headstribg by Mohamed Kamal Alavi
- Audience Award: If You Don't Like It, Look Away by Margaux Fournier
- International Competition Unifrance Award: The Juggler by Jennifer Fanjeaux
- Experimental Competition Unifrance Award: Windows by Elsa Pennachio and Étienne de Villars
- France 3 Libre Court Award: Under the Leaves 1 by Claude Ciccolella
- Junior High School Students Award: No Skate! by Guil Sela
- International Competition Special Mention: To the Woods by Agnès Patron
- Youth Jury Special Mention: God is Shy by Jocelyn Charles
The festival week
True to its reputation as a “pioneer” of hybrid forms and a programmer of more or less familiar cinematographic works, the Tous Courts Festival has, since its inception, showcased films that resonate with those in the two competitions. Thus, experimentation, the spearhead of the event, is at the heart of the parallel programs
Alongside the films in competition, there will be three carte blanche selections:
➤ La Distributrice de Films: new Canadian cinema
➤ Ardèche Images: graduation short films from the Master's in Documentary Film program in Lussas
➤ Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir: the film history of feminist activism
La Nuit du Court-Métrage (Short Film Night)
To explore our relationship with animals, La Nuit Animale highlighted the presence of non-humans on our screens through four programs combining fiction, animation, documentary, and experimental films. La Nuit du Court-Metrage 2026 promises to be just as enticing and will be dedicated to short films inspired by the theme of “water.”
The 27th Film Market, December 3–5
Held at Onepoint, the festival's nerve center, it enabled:
➤ Access to the video library offering all the films entered in the festival
➤ The organization of meetings between professionals to discuss the future
➤ Meetings with international distributors and buyers:
Buyers:
- Krešimir Zubčić (HRT – Croatia)
- Simon Young (Shorts TV – United Kingdom)
- Yuuri Nishida (SAMANSA – Japan)
Distributors:
- Paul Landriau (La Distributrice de films – Canada/Quebec)
- Gerald Weber (sixpackfilm – Austria)
- Sara Xiol Pueyo (DocsBarcelona – Spain)
In terms of round tables, the one devoted to the distribution and dissemination of short films provided an opportunity to take stock of the practices and mechanisms put in place to promote and highlight emerging creativity. Nathalie Lebel (L'Agence du court métrage), Paul Landriau (La Distributrice de Films), and Valère Zysman-Singer (CNC) engaged with a large audience, mainly made up of film students. Beyond the traditional issues of distribution and possible support, the role of VoD platforms in the audiovisual landscape and the use of AI in the service of cinema were also discussed.
