The theme of this 31st festival “Freedom to us!” was decided a year ago during the last festival following the song from René Clair’s film sung by Edgar Morin, who is indeed invited this year, a young man of 97 springs!
This festival, taking place from October 5th to 7th, should satisfy all tastes, all genres: literature, theater, cinema, comics, debates that are ever more enriching each year. A festival designed and conceived, beyond security measures, for pedestrians. Three intense days with 380 authors, literary cafés, conferences, 175 exhibitors of publishers and booksellers, and five cinema halls.
The guests are international, coming from all regions where people know how to open a book. In this regard, the Crédit Mutuel foundation, a festival partner, is organizing a competition on the 14th as part of the festival, aimed at combating illiteracy.
If Victor Hugo preferred to open a school rather than a prison, here we choose to open a book whose beauty of words would be the best means to provide young people, too often uprooted, the tools to integrate by expressing themselves, hence this fight against illiteracy. Cinema is a way to testify through images the events of life. The filmmaker writes with their camera. 19 films are on the program.
Learning to think, knowing how to free oneself from the chains of globalization; how to solve the human tragedy that in the Mediterranean is a cry for help from men, women, and children whose fate when they are not shipwrecked, find themselves corralled like animals in inhumane conditions.
Reading, introducing authors, readings, shows, concerts. The festival is also the street. As seen, it is pedestrianized, delivered to festival-goers. Exhibitions, youth from kindergarten to middle school, high school and even university students.
The Mouans-Sartoux festival, in conjunction with the Contemporary Art Space, offers visitors a visit to the 16th-century castle, a haven of abstract and contemporary art, with the Albers-Honneger donation. October 5th, 6th, and 7th, 2018 will be an unforgettable moment for book and literature lovers.
Thierry Jan
