History

From Sep­tem­ber 1^st to 10^th, 2023

Hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly over­come the pub­lic health cri­sis not long before, Deauville found itself caught up in fresh tur­moil. Weeks before the Festival’s open­ing, an unprece­dent­ed strike unit­ing the Writ­ers Guild of Amer­i­ca with the SAG-AFTRA union was called across the Atlantic, par­a­lyz­ing the entire film indus­try for months so that Hol­ly­wood screen­writ­ers and actors could defend their rights. Natal­ie Port­man, Peter Din­klage, Jude Law and Joseph Gor­don-Levitt were unfor­tu­nate­ly no longer able to join us on the Nor­mandy coast.

Yet cinephiles and movie bingers con­soled them­selves by attend­ing the mov­ing trib­ute to pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Jer­ry Schatzberg, icon­ic fig­ure of the New Hol­ly­wood, as well as by join­ing Emil­ia Clarke, the unfor­get­table Daen­erys Tar­garyen, Moth­er of Drag­ons, from the hit series Game of Thrones.

Mean­while, the Fes­ti­val con­tin­ued open­ing a Win­dow on French Cin­e­ma and set­ting its clocks to The Croisette Hour, with such poignant and notable works as Thomas Cailley’s Ani­mal King­dom, Mar­co Bellochio’s Kid­napped and Judith Godrèche’s return to France with event series Icon of French Cin­e­ma.

While fes­ti­val­go­ers could also chat with Car­ole Bou­quet and retrace 100 Years of Warn­er Bros. with the Uncle Sam Docs, they above all seized on the oppor­tu­ni­ty offered by Deauville to debate what buzzy pre­mieres might hold in store, begin­ning with Jonathan Glazer’s sen­sa­tion The Zone of Inter­est, win­ner of the 2024 Acad­e­my Award for Best Inter­na­tion­al Film, as well as Todd Haynes’ sul­furous May Decem­ber and Karim Aïnouz’s Fire­brand.

With its blend of neo-West­ern and dark com­e­dy, Sean Atkinson’s com­pe­ti­tion entry LaRoy, Texas not only swept the Audi­ence Award and the Crit­ics’ Award, it also won the Grand Prize from the jury led by Guil­laume Canet.