The actress and director Agnès Jaoui will receive an honorary César for her career at the age of 59, during the 49th César ceremony on February 23, the organizers announced on Friday. This prize will reward a “complete artist” with a forty-year career, with five feature films to direct, including Le Goût des Autres (2000), which won the César for best film and best screenplay. She also has around fifty roles on screen (Smoking/No Smoking and We Know the Song with Alain Resnais, Un Air de Famille with Cédric Klapisch…). Not to mention the scene.
“It was at the theater, in 1987, that her career really took off and was forever marked: there she met a certain Jean-Pierre Bacri. A true creative fusion takes place between them, giving birth to numerous successful plays and films,” underlines the Académie des César in a press release. They were one of the most famous couples in cinema, and remained close after their separation, until Bacri’s death in 2021.
Committed, she spoke out in 2020 against sexism and misogyny, recounting having been “abused around 5 years old by a stranger in the stairwell of (her) building”, then at 11 years old by her uncle, to make reduce the silence on sexual violence.
Agnès Jaoui is “the most awarded female artist at the César, with six statuettes”, underlines the press release. She has never stopped filming and will still be showing on Wednesday in a comedy, The Last of the Jews. The César nominations must be revealed next Wednesday. The film Anatomy of a Fall, which won the Palme d’Or in May, is the favorite. The members of the Academy will have one month to vote, before the ceremony is held on February 23 at the Olympia, chaired by Valérie Lemercier.
The evening, often the occasion for political or social demands, will also be a baptism of fire for the new Minister of Culture Rachida Dati.
