On February 24, local time, the César Award, the highest honor in the French film industry, was announced in Paris. The biggest winner of the night was the film "Night of the 12th", which won six awards including Best Picture and Best Director. The focus of the audience was the surprise appearance of Hollywood actor Brad Pitt to present a special honorary award to his friend and director David Fincher.
Director David Fincher (right) shakes hands with actor Brad Pitt. Visual China map
The César Prize, named after the French sculptor César Baldaccini, was born in 1976 and designed the trophy; Founded in 1975, the French Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is voted by its members, and the number of members has reached 4,705. Films that have been funded by France and released in France the previous year are eligible to participate.
"The Night of the 12th", which takes an unsolved murder as a clue, is director Dominic Moore's seventh feature film; It attracted 500,000 viewers in France and won quite good box office results. In the choice of subject matter, Moore has always preferred suspense and crime, and his work style tends to be cold and restrained. In 2001, he won the César Award for Best Director for My Best Friend Harry.
"Night of the 12th" poster
Affected by the epidemic, the first two César Awards were held in a combination of online and offline mode. And this has greatly weakened the focus of the César Award, because based on past experience, various controversial events have always been more topical than the award itself. This year's 48th edition finally returned to normal, so the stadium and outside the stadium became lively again.
First of all, the "bustling" protesters returned. Just as the awards were in full swing, a young woman wearing an undershirt with the words "We only have 761 days left" burst onto the stage. The live TV signal was abruptly interrupted for about half a minute, and by the time the footage recovered, the protesters had completely disappeared and the award presentation process continued as usual.
The bigger controversy actually arose as early as after this year's nominees were announced. The five people nominated for Best Director at this year's Caesar Awards are all men. Previously, the outside world has criticized the problem that there is no woman in the Oscar Best Director nominees. France, which has always performed better than the other side of the ocean in terms of gender equality, has followed in Hollywood's footsteps and is inevitably left behind.
Moreover, last year France did produce several universally recognized female directorial works, including "Saint-Omer" directed by Alice Diop, "Just the Morning Light" directed by Mia Hansen-Love, "Memory of Paris" by Alice Winogul, and "Bad Kids" co-directed by Liz Acorka and Roman Grete. These four works, when France selected the Oscar for Best International Film last year, all entered the list, and finally "Saint-Omer" was selected. "Bad Kids" won the Cannes Film Festival One Attention Unit Award, "Morning Light" won the Director's Fortnight Award at Cannes, and "Saint-Omer" won the Grand Jury Prize and Best First Film at last year's Venice Film Festival. In addition, the famous director Claire Denis' new film "Noonday Star" also won the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival. However, the above female directors did not get the Best Director nomination at the César Awards in the end, and their works were also not nominated for Best Picture, and only "Saint-Omer" was selected for Best First Film, so it was both surprising and puzzling.
As a result, when the nominations for the César Awards were announced at the end of January, a big debate about gender equality and sexism in the French film industry was set off on French social media, and "the César Awards are too man" once became a hot online keyword. "Saint-Omer" star Guslaj Maranda publicly denounced it as "a big step backwards that embarrasses all French filmmakers".
The problem is that the César Prize has spent a lot of effort in the past two years to promote gender equality. Especially in 2020, after the organizers insisted on awarding the Best Director Award to Roman Polanski, which led to the angry departure of female directors, the César Awards embarked on internal reforms, including actively recruiting female members and achieving gender parity at the board level. The current proportion of women in the 4,705 César Award judges has increased from 30% in 2020 to more than 40%, a significant change.
Therefore, it was previously said that there were not enough female judges and that male judges were discriminated against, so female directors were ignored; Now that the proportion of female judges has increased greatly, as a result, female directors still fail to be selected, is it that even female judges do not support their female counterparts much? Or is it really these works that are applauded by the media and popular by the audience, which really can't enter the eyes of French film colleagues? In fact, people in the French film industry are also confused by this.
There is a theory that this year's César Awards made a major reform in order to shorten the time of the awards ceremony - the number of best director nominees was reduced from seven in the past to five, so all women were directly excluded. In fact, the César Awards were four Best Director candidates in the early years, starting to five in 1984 and expanding to a seven-person list until the 37th edition in 2012, when there were considerations for increasing the chances of female directors being shortlisted. In 2016, they also replaced the gender-specific French word réalisateur in the original title "best director" with non-gendered réalisation to show equality.
So far, the most winner of the Best Director award in the history of the César Awards is Roman Polanski, who won it five times. Among female directors, only McWin has been nominated three times, but failed to win three times. In fact, in the nearly half-century history of the César Awards, Tonne Marshall successfully won the Best Director Award in 2000 with "Venus Beauty Salon".
Verginie Eiffera and Benoit Majmel won Best Actress and Best Actor respectively. Visual China map
David Fincher received the César Award Special Honor Award. Visual China map
【List of winners of the 48th César Awards】
Best Film: "The Night of the 12th"
Best Director: Dominic Moore "The Night of the 12th"
Best Actress: Verzhnie Efera "Paris Memory"
Best Actor: Benoît Majmel "Torment on the Island"
Best Supporting Actress: Nomi Merant "Love You Deserve My Unlucky"
Best Supporting Actor: Burleigh Rannell, "The Night of the 12th"
Best New Actress: Nadia Teleszkovich, Almond Theatre
Best New Actor: Bastian Bouillon "Night of the 12th"
Best Original Screenplay: "Love You Deserve My Unlucky"
Best Adapted Screenplay: "The Night of the 12th"
Best International Film: Those Beasts
Best Animated Feature Film: "Sunshine Monster Boy"
Best Documentary Feature: "Homecoming"
Best Feature Premiere: Alice Diop "Saint Omer"
Best Soundtrack: "Full Time"
Best Sound Effect: "Night of the 12th"
Best Cinematography: "Burning on the Island"
Best Editing: "Full Time"
Best Costume: Simone: Journey of the Century
Best Set Design: Simone: A Journey of the Century
Best Visual Effects: "Notre Dame on Burning"
Special Honorable Mention: David Fincher