EXCLUSIVE: Emmanuel Courcol’s feel-good drama The Marching Band has been unveiled as the winner of the Audience Award of the 30th Rendez-Vous With French Cinema In New York.
The heartwarming, music-themed crowd-pleaser, starring Benjamin Lavernhe as a celebrated conductor who discovers he is adopted and has a brother raised and living in a depressed manufacturing town, has enjoyed a successful box run in France where it grossed close to $20M.
In other prizes, French-Japanese director Koya Kamura won the Best Emerging Filmmaker Award for Winter in Sokcho, while Jonathan Millet’s psychological thriller Ghost Trail received the one-off Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 30th Anniversary Award.
Organised by French cinema and TV promotional body Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center, the 30th Rendez-Vous With French Cinema in New York ran from March 6 to 16.
Its 30th edition saw a healthy gain in attendance, with 8,500 tickets issued, including 467 students attending education screenings and more than 150 people attending free talks.
Of the 23 feature films in this year’s lineup, more than half were directed by women, four were feature debuts of upcoming directors, and eight directors had films in past installments of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.
Winter in Sokcho, which originally world premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, stars Roschdy Zem as a French artist who travels to Japan, where he connects with a young woman coming to terms with her abandonment by a French father.
The Best Emerging Filmmaker Student Jury praised the film’s exploration of French identity, the special spiritual connection between strangers as well as its warmth and creative use of animated interludes, calling it “an impressive debut.”
The award is designed to bring attention to the unique cinematic point of view of emerging filmmakers and their interpretation of France’s new and diverse identities, and to encourage young people to attend the festival.
Six New York City college students were invited to participate in the Best Emerging Filmmaker Student Jury, and to choose their favorite first or second feature from this year’s Rendez-Vous lineup. The students were chosen by the professors of Rendez-Vous’ partner universities.
The same jury also decided the 30th Anniversary Award for Ghost Trail, in which a former prisoner pursuing Syria’s fugitive leaders is determined to confront his torturer. They praised the film’s “precious, rare tension,” its humanity in the treatment of a Syrian refugee’s story, and its “bold” and “experimental” stylistic elements.
