The 2024 Filmmakers’ Fortnight has revealed its prize list, with labels awarded to “Ma vie ma bouche” and “September sans attendant”, and its very first audience prize awarded to “Une langue universal”.
End clap for the 2024 Filmmakers’ Fortnight. The parallel section of the Cannes Festival, non-competitive, awarded its traditional labels and, for the very first time, an audience prize (sponsored by the Chantal Akerman Foundation). Canadian director Matthew Rankin is therefore the very first winner of an audience award on the Croisette, all sections combined, with A Universal Language, an absurd comedy which sees the inhabitants of Winnipeg suddenly speaking Persian.
Two other films were praised as part of this new edition. My life, my mouth, a posthumous film by Sophie Fillières (released September 18), completed by the children of the French filmmaker after her death in July 2023, leaves with the SACD Prize. The Europa Cinemas Label was awarded to the Spaniard Jonás Trueba for September without delay (in theaters on August 28), a dramatic comedy centered on a separation party organized by a couple who are leaving.
The complete winners of the 2024 Filmmakers’ Fortnight
- Audience Award: A universal language of Matthew Rankin
- SACD price: My life my face of Sophie Fillières
- Europa Cinemas Label: September without delay of Jonas Trueba
A stripping fence
After the strong emotion of the opening ceremony with My life, my face, the Quinzaine des filmmakers opted for black and caustic humor as the closing film. The black comedy Plastic Guns (at the cinema on June 26) has as its main inspiration the Dupont de Ligonnès affair! It is obviously a fiction, but the plot is that of this man whose story has caused a lot of ink to flow. The murder of his family, and his escape.
This new production by Jean-Christophe Meurisse (founder of the troupe Les Chiens de Navarre) fully embraces the genre of black comedy, clearly leaning towards the Coen brothers. The film is a succession of sketches, with several main characters as a common thread, including the excellent Delphine Baril and Charlotte Laemmel, but also numerous guests: Jonathan Coen, Nora Hamzawi, Vincent Dedienne and Aymeric Lompret.
What is the Filmmakers’ Fortnight?
Created in 1969 following the May 68 revolt, the Filmmakers’ Fortnight (formerly Directors’ Fortnight) offers a showcase of all the world’s cinemas, without censorship or competition. Each year, the event offers a selection of films from around the world during the Cannes Film Festival with the aim of helping filmmakers and encouraging their discovery by the public and critics. It is not only about revealing new talents in world cinematography and the great filmmakers of tomorrow but also about welcoming artists who are still unknown in the West or too often absent from major international festivals.
During the opening evening, on May 15, the General Delegate Julien Rejl recalled the mission of the Fortnight: “At the heart of the storm that we are going through regarding the precariousness of the life of festivals, of their staff, but also of all authors, I think that it is essential that the fortnight stays its course, that is to say -say to continue to assure all filmmakers around the world, whatever their nationality, whatever the economics of their production, to all those filmmakers who want to create freely and experiment, that this place, the fortnight, exists, that they will be well received there, that they will be able to come and show and discuss their film, without fear, in front of an audience of enthusiasts”.
