History

From Sep­tem­ber 3^rd to 12^th, 2021, in yet anoth­er year struck by the pub­lic health cri­sis, Deauville for­tu­nate­ly took place in per­son and con­tin­ued to open its arms to the world.

Rein­forc­ing its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val through the Croisette Hour sec­tion, pre­sent­ing sev­en films from all around the world hail­ing from the offi­cial Cannes selec­tion, includ­ing the two Grand Prize win­ners A Hero by Asghar Farha­di and Com­part­ment No. 6 by Juho Kuos­ma­n­en, Deauville opened a win­dow on French cin­e­ma for the first time.

Five French films received their world pre­mieres at the fes­ti­val, with the film­mak­ers and cast in atten­dance, includ­ing Christophe Honoré’s Guer­mantes, Claude Lelouch’s Love is Bet­ter than Life and Cécile Ducrocq’s Her Way.

Audi­ences came out in droves to pay trib­ute to cin­e­ma, com­muning togeth­er in the festival’s three the­aters and shar­ing incred­i­ble moments through excep­tion­al encoun­ters orga­nized by the fes­ti­val with three essen­tial fig­ures of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma: John­ny Depp, who hon­ored us by return­ing to Deauville fol­low­ing his 2019 trib­ute, Oliv­er Stone, who came to present his shock­ing doc­u­men­tary on the JFK assas­si­na­tion, and Michael Shan­non, a fes­ti­val reg­u­lar known for his hyp­not­ic pres­ence in two Grand Prize win­ners, Jeff Nichols’ Take Shel­ter (2011) and Ramin Bahrain’s 99 Homes (2014), who received his own trib­ute that year.

With an eye toward the next gen­er­a­tion and the future of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma, the fes­ti­val also wel­comed actress Dylan Penn, who received the New Hol­ly­wood prize from Clé­mence Poésy, the Rev­e­la­tion Jury President.

Final­ly, Char­lotte Gains­bourg, glob­al icon and Jury Pres­i­dent, pre­sent­ed Jane by Char­lotte, a mov­ing doc­u­men­tary about her moth­er Jane Birkin, and jour­neyed with her jury across the ago­nies and ecstasies of the Unit­ed States by decid­ing among the 13 inde­pen­dent Amer­i­can fea­ture films in com­pe­ti­tion. Diego Ongaro’s Down with the King, a les­son in human­i­ty from rur­al Amer­i­ca, won the Grand Prize.