A week covered in gold for Justine Triet. The director, star of this Tuesday’s Oscar nominations, also had an excellent evening the day before Monday during the 29th Lights ceremony. Anatomy of a Fall was the big winner of the gala, organized by the Parisian correspondents of the international press.
The Palme d’Or collects three trophies: best film, best actress for Sandra Hüller and best screenplay. Teasingly, Justine Triet thanked her companion and co-author Arthur Harari with a “I don’t know if he will want to work with me again”. Throughout the ceremonies, the director often recalled that Anatomy of a Fall which dissects the balance of power within a couple of artists was born in the pressure cooker of confinement. Equally facetious, Arthur Harari said he was worried because, like the deceased husband in the film, “he is in the process of insulating the attic”.
The Enlightenment list, however, was intended to be open. The statuette for best director crowns the fantastical dystopia The Animal Kingdom by Thomas Cailley. Arieh Worthalter wins best actor for The Goldman Trial by Cédric Kahn, The Rapture of Iris Kaltenbäck is crowned best first feature, Les Filles d’Olfa by Kaouther Ben Hania best documentary and Linda wants chicken! by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach, best animated film. On the revelation side, the young and precocious Raphael Quenard (Yannick, Junkyard Dog) and Ella Rumpf (Marguerite’s Theorem) are doing well.
The Lumières awards are one of the barometers of the French awards season and are a good indication of the films which will be acclaimed by the Césars who will announce their nominations tomorrow morning, Wednesday. The Animal Kingdom and Anatomy of a Fall should take the lion’s share. Justine Triet to become, during the ceremony on February 23, the second director in the history of French cinema to be crowned “best director”, after Tonie Marshall for Vénus Beauté (institut), in 2000.
