Andres Ramirez Pulido’s “La Jauria” won the Grand Prize at Critics’ Week, the Cannes Film Festival’s sidebar dedicated to first and second features. The Colombian film also won the SACD prize.
The feature debut follows Eliú, a country boy who is wrongly accused of a crime and incarcerated in an experimental rehabilitation center for tough boys in the heart of the Colombian tropical forest.
Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun,” which stars “Normal People” actor Paul Mescal, won the French Touch Prize of the Jury. The bittersweet drama revolves around a father and daughter who spend a summer holiday in a resort where people dance the Macarena. Emmanuelle Nicot’s “Love According To Dalva,” meanwhile, won the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award for Zelda Samson. “Love According to Dalva” is a poignant drama about a 12-year-old girl growing up in foster care, alongside social workers and other children.
This year’s jury was presided over by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania (“The Man who Sold his Skin”) which played at Venice in 2020 and was the first Tunisian film nominated for the Oscars’ international feature film race.
The jury of the 61st edition was completed by French-Greek actress and director Ariane Labed, Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson (“Woman at War”), Belgian cinematographer Benoît Debie, and South Korean journalist and Busan Festival’s topper Huh Moon yung.
This year marked the first edition of Ava Cahen, a well-respected 36-year-old film journalist who took over as artistic director from Charles Tesson last August. The lineup included 11 feature films which were selected out of 1100 submitted movies. Jesse Eisenberg’s feature debut “When You Finish Saving the World” kicked off Critics’ Week.