French actor Paul Kircher received the Best Newcomer award on Saturday at the Venice Film Festival for his role in “Their Children After Them,” adapted from the novel by Nicolas Mathieu.
Adapted from a book that won the 2018 Prix Goncourt and was widely acclaimed, the film is “the story of teenagers and a generation who grow up with a burning desire to participate in the world and are pushed aside,” said Paul Kircher, 22, as he accepted the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best emerging actor.
He then thanked, in Italian, the jury chaired by Isabelle Huppert and the festival, which offered him the first major prize of his young career.
In this melancholic fresco about adolescence and social reproduction, Paul Kircher plays one of the two main characters, Anthony, a worker’s child who is madly in love with the daughter of a notable.
Directed by twin brothers, Zoran and Ludovic Boukherma, aged 32, the film follows over several years the destiny of these teenagers from a town in Lorraine hit by deindustrialisation, as well as their friends.
With this role, Paul Kircher beautifully closes a trilogy on adolescence, after having taken his first steps with Christophe Honoré (“Le Lycéen”) then exploded last year in “Le royaume animal”, rewarded with five Césars.
This film made him one of the most prominent new faces in French cinema.
A child of the ball, he is the son of actors Irène Jacob and Jérôme Kircher. His brother Samuel also began a career in cinema, with a role in “Last Summer” by Catherine Breillat.
“Their Children After Them” is released on December 4 in France.
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