Cannes Directors’ Fortnight is launching a brand new People’s Choice viewers award at its upcoming version, operating alongside the primary pageant from May 15 to 26.
The parallel part mentioned the award, which comes with a €7,500 ($8,100) money prize, was in line with the spirit of the occasion, which has at all times been open to members of the general public alongside cinema professionals since its launch in 1969.
It would be the first viewers award to be launched in Cannes, throughout the Official Selection and the parallel sections of Directors’ Fortnight, Critics’ Week and Acid.
“Every year, in addition to professionals and other accredited guests, the Fortnight opens its doors to thousands of cinephiles from around the world, in order to share its selection in a welcoming setting, giving filmmakers the opportunity to meet the first audience for their films, and the audiences a chance to take part in Q&As with film teams,” Directors’ Fortnight mentioned in a press release.
“It is this interactive dimension that we’d like to celebrate today by inviting our audiences to vote: this will also mark the first audience award in the history of the Festival de Cannes,” it added.
Directors’ Fortnight mentioned the brand new award could be linked to the legacy of Chantal Akerman and that the money prize was being supported by the Fondation Chantal Akerman.
The part prompt that the late filmmaker’s “pioneering, eclectic and fiercely independent vision might serve as a compass” for the brand new award.
Groundbreaking Belgian filmmaker Akerman, who died on the age of 65 in 2015, had shut ties with Directors Fortnight.
Her breakthrough movie Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce – 1080 Brussel, which is now considered twentieth Century function movie traditional, world premiered within the part in 1975.
Directors’ Fortnight additionally welcomed subsequent works Golden Eighties (1986), South (1999), The Captive (2000) and Tombée de Nuit sur Shanghaï (2007), her phase within the portmanteau movie State of the World with Ayisha Abraham and Wang Bing.