Albert Serra’s film is rewarded with the best male cinematography and performance, a category in which the actor Benoît Magimel repeats
Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s work also wins the award for best foreign film
‘As Bestas’ sweeps the Goya Awards
Bittersweet night in Paris for the dandy of Catalan cinema Albert Serra. ‘Pacifiction’, the latest work by the director from Banyoles, won two of the nine awards César to which she had been nominated. The French equivalent of the Goya rewarded the actor Benoit Magimel with the award for best male performance. She also rewarded the stylistic and visual strength of Serra’s film with the César for best cinematography for the Catalan Artur Tort. But ‘Pacifiction’, recorded in French, was left without the award for best direction and best film, to which he also aspired.
“I didn’t know we could have so much freedom in a film,” said Magimel, referring to Serra’s singular direction, in his thank-you speech after having won the same award for the second consecutive year. In addition to the two statuettes for ‘Pacifiction’, other good news for Spanish culture was the award for ‘As Bestas’ as best foreign film.
“Thank you very much for allowing me to be a small part of French cinema,” said Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who was competing in this category with ‘Triangle of Sadness’ by Ruben Östlund —the last Palme d’Or at Cannes— or with the Polish “EO” by Jerry Skolimowski, among other films. This success of the Spanish-French production, which had already been the great winner of the Goyaconfirmed last year’s excellent harvest of the seventh art in Spain.
‘The night of the 12th’, the great winner
However, the great winner of the act at the Parisian Olympia theater was ‘The night of 12′ by Dominik Moll. This Franco-Belgian thriller about the investigation into the murder of a young woman won six statuettes, including best film and best director.
The comedy ‘The innocent’ by Louis Garrel won two statuettes, among them the best screenplay, despite having been nominated in ten categories. He biopic about Simone Veil (‘Simone, the woman of the century’) was also rewarded with the best decoration and the best costumes.
In addition, the Gallic Film Academy awarded an honorary César to the American’s career David Fincher, director of ‘Zodiac’, ‘The fight club’ or ‘Mank’. “I am proud to have been able to do this ambush and this tribute to one of our best storytellers,” he said. Brad Pittwho unexpectedly participated in the act to give the award to Fincher, director of some of the best performances of the Hollywood star.
“We are not passing through nor are we a fashion effect& rdquor;
The ceremony was surrounded by the controversy caused by the little presence of women in the two main categories, which fueled the debate on the machismo that drags the Film Academy in France. No female director had been nominated for the César for Best Director – a worrying situation that has also been reproduced this year in the nominations in this category at the Oscars. ‘Les Amendiers’ by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi represented the only film with a female authorship selected for the best film award.
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“We are not passing nor are we a fashion effect& rdquor ;, assured the director Alice Diop, author of ‘Saint Omer’, who praised a “new generation & rdquor; of filmmakers in his speech after winning the award for best first film. Although the Césars have been awarded since 1976, only one woman has won a Best Director statuette in nearly five decades.
Along with this controversy due to the insufficient recognition of women’s art, present during a good part of the ceremony, the fight against climate change also had its moment of glory. An environmentalist militant starred in an unexpected foray onto the stage wearing a T-shirt in which she warned about the climate urgency. Throughout this 48th edition of the Césars, there were messages of solidarity with Ukraine, women in Iran or demonstrations against raising the retirement age in France.