Director Alain Guiraudie, a cutting-edge and transgressive filmmaker selected several times at the Cannes Film Festival, was rewarded on Wednesday December 4, 2024 with the Louis-Delluc Prize, nicknamed the “Goncourt of cinema”, for his latest film, Mercy. This rural thriller which combines sex, death and male desire is Alain Guiraudie's seventh feature film.
A film about “the impulse towards the other”
Unveiled at “Cannes Première”, during the last festival, it features a young man who returns to the village to attend the funeral of his former boss. Between a mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbor and a priest with strange intentions, his short stay takes an unexpected turn…
“For me, Mercy, more than the question of forgiveness, is the idea of empathy, of understanding the other even beyond all morality. It is the impulse towards the other, underlines the director in the production notes. It’s also an outdated word that we don’t use much anymore and it corresponds very well to the film and especially to one of its great characters, the priest.”
Transform the world
For critic Sophie Avon, vice-president of the Louis-Delluc Prize, “Alain Guiraudie is a filmmaker of great originality with a particular and very rich way of transforming the world, while remaining accessible. We have been following his work for several years. Mercy is an intense and funny film, with great narrative breadth and a lot of serenity,” she adds to AFP.
In 2013, Alain Guiraudie was distinguished at Cannes for The Stranger of the Lake by the prize for directing in the “Un Certain Regard” selection and the Queer Palm, an independent trophy rewarding films dealing with sexual and gender diversity.
Admirable “competition”
The 2024 Louis-Delluc prize for first film went to the feature film The Ghosts by Jonathan Millet, on the hunt for Syrian war criminals hidden in Europe.
In the feature film category, the Larrieu brothers were also in the running for Jim's NovelPatricia Mazuy for The Prisoner of BordeauxThierry de Peretti for In his imageMati Diop for DahomeySophie Fillières for My life, my faceGaël Morel for Live, die, be rebornBoris Lojkine for The Story of Souleymane and Virgil Vernier for One hundred thousand billion.
Our “Cinema” file
Last year, Thomas Cailley, for The Animal Kingdomhad been distinguished by this prestigious 7th art prize, founded in 1937 in homage to Louis Delluc, the first French journalist specializing in cinema and founder of film clubs.
