When we talk about the Cannes Film Festival, the general public thinks of movies, tuxedos, strass and glitter. For Wallimage, it is rather, meetings, discussions, presentations and blisters on the toes. Because yes, in Cannes, we walk a lot.
The movies ? Yes, we love it, but we hardly have time to see it.
Fortunately, in this segment, we live vicariously through the happiness of the teams we have supported when they collect awards. And the least we can say is that we were spoiled.
Wallimage lined up this year three films in selection. And all three won awards!!!
On Friday, the GAN Foundation Prize was awarded to Vivarium (Frakas co-production) as part of the International Critics’ Week. Saturday, again : it is a Prize for Best Actress that went to Chiara Mastroianni for her physical performance in Room 212 (co-produced by Scope Pictures). A prize awarded in the section Un Certain Regard that adds to that of Émilie Dequenne won at the same place in 2012 for A perdre la raison.
This left us with the stressful ordeal of the official competition awards, which begins with the traditional exercise of famous : will the Dardennes be called back to Cannes for the closing ceremony ? We had to wait until the beginning of the afternoon to have the indication while their appearance at the bottom of the steps at 6:30 pm confirmed what was still only insinuation and rumor.
After two Palmes d’or (Rosetta and The Child), a screenplay award (Lorna’s Silence) and a grand prize (The Kid on the Bike), the brothers were at this point already sure to make history by becoming the most awarded directors at Cannes. Especially if we add the two interpretation prizes given to Émilie Dequenne (Rosetta) and Olivier Gourmet (Le fils).
We now know that a formidable Prize for Directing was awarded to The Young Ahmed, which seems to us to be particularly well seen by the jury : the sensational last scene of the film would even justify, on its own, this distinction. We have rarely seen a more precise, scathing and meaningful staging. In addition, Jean-Pierre and Luc complete a panel of awards absolutely unique in the history of cinema, which fills us with happiness for them, for Les Films du fleuve and for all those who have participated in their incredible filmography.
These seven prizes were awarded by six different international and sovereign juries. That’s enough to say the universal power of their cinema that this new opus totally ratifies.
For Wallimage, the 2019 edition of the Cannes Film Festival was also marked by the presentation, in the NeXT section of the Film Market, of 4 innovative Walloon startups in the fields of image and/or sound! This ” Walloon Entertechment ” conference was organized and sponsored by Wallimage Entreprises. The stars of the day were David Schmitz for iBox Team, David Bourgeois for CyanView and the duo Stéphane Rigotti / Étienne Dontaine for Sound Maker. Virginie Nouvelle represented Wallimage Entreprises and Alban de Fraipont from Emoticom moderated the debates which ended with a presentation of our Wallywood application!
A great event that extends the Wallimage brand abroad.
As for the rest, as you can imagine, the team members who followed one another in Cannes have each multiplied the meetings and appreciated the honors given to the Walloon funds, notably by the Frontier Market who publicly singled us out as one of the main supporters of genre cinema in Europe, and by the international salesman XYZ who bluntly said during a well-attended public meeting that in order to produce genre films in Europe, the two ” countries ” that were absolutely necessary were Ireland and… Wallonia.
