At the beginning of January, the Nice film community is invited to review the film production of the past year. After various consultations, a final debate, and a vote, a list of winners is announced.
It’s the Seagull Festival at the Ciné-Café in Nice. After which, the sea bird will enthusiastically spread its appreciative messages to the distinguished artists with a flap of its wings.
Thanks to Daniel Fimbel for his passion and commitment.
Here is the latest pecking order…
1 – MUSTANG by Deniz Gamze Ergüven
By a brilliant Franco-Turkish graduate of Femis, a kind of manual of domestic subversion, driven by 5 young actresses as proud and happy as their characters to defy the patriarchy that suffocates them. Go girls!
2 – MIA MADRE by Nanni Moretti with Magherita Bay and John Turturro
A variation both funny and touching on the different experiences of mourning – artistic, philosophical, or intimate – by an unsinkable director whose existential wounds continually revitalize his artistic journey. Arrivederci, Nanni!
3 – MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART by Jia Zhangke
A somber creation by one of the pillars of the latest generation of Chinese filmmakers, a new portrayal of the “economic miracles” that orchestrates here, within a sublime visual setting, the standards of melodrama and the most astonishing narrative audacities. Cinema, cinema, when you’re here!
4 – FATIMA by Philippe Faucon with Soria Zeroual
When the cleaning lady Fatima puts down on paper all the impulses of her soul, her fears, and hopes as a mother and immigrant, a powerful voice rises and reaches us. An infinitely delicate tribute to invisible heroines…
5 – WILD TALES by Damian Szifron
The spectacular release of Argentine citizens at their wit’s end: a controlled tempo for a cascade of cruel and hilarious twists, along a cathartic screenplay written by a former adman with explosive talent as varied as his multiple narratives.
6 – TAXI TEHRAN by and with Jafar Panahi
With a camera on board, the banned filmmaker turned driver watches the entire Iranian society pass by in his back seat… a relaxed and understated tribute to cultural resistance and the magical powers of cinema.
7 – YOUTH by Paolo Sorrentino with Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel
A fireworks display (and of artifices, some have said) by a polarizing artist who sometimes gets tangled in the colorful rug of his ambitions… while still launching, time and again, sumptuous rockets into the firmament of the 7th Art.
8 – SON OF SAUL by Laszlo Némes with Géza Röhrig
In a debut feature, Némes breaks through the wall of debates on the impossible representation of the Holocaust, using an immersive strategy based on an unyielding off-screen presence for over 100 minutes. Death of a taboo and Long live cinema!
9 – ARABIAN NIGHTS by Miguel Gomes with Cristina Alfaiate
Princess Scheherazade at the bedside of the crisis-stricken kingdom of Europe… An ample and rich work, woven with poetic extravagances, that manages to invest the mental spaces and cultural nooks that financialization still struggles to annex… Hats off to the Artist! And respect.
10 – HOWARD ZINN, A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet
Going beyond the grooves of militant cinema, the portrait in context and the meticulous examination of the theses of an intellectual and activist who has revolutionized the image that the American empire tried to project of its history. Impressive!
