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AWARDS France

France's Sopadin Grand Prix for Best Screenwriter goes to Arab Blues

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- Manele Labidi Labbé's screenplay wins the Sopadin prize. Seul à la noce by Thomas Keumurian wins in the Junior category

France's Sopadin Grand Prix for Best Screenwriter goes to Arab Blues
Manele Labidi Labbé collects the Sopadin Grand Prix

Yesterday evening the winners of the Sopadin Award for best screenwriter were revealed at the 31st edition. The Grand Prix was awarded to Manele Labidi Labbé for his screenplay Arab Blues [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Manele Labidi
film profile
]
, which focuses on 35-year-old Selma. After training in France, Selma opens her own psychoanalytical practice in a popular suburb of Tunis, just after the revolution. Despite a turbulent beginning, demand turns out to be significant in this schizophrenic country. As Selma begins to find her bearings, she discovers that she's missing a certain certification that’s vital if she wishes to continue her practice. While on her administrative quest, she’ll be forced to reconnect with a past she thought she had left behind... The project was developed by Jean-Christophe Reymond for Kazak Productions.

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The jury, chaired by Julie Gayet, awarded the special prize to Madeleine Collins by Antoine Barraud (The Sinkholes [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, Portrait of the Artist [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), which focuses on a woman leading a double life in Switzerland and France. In one country is Abdel, with whom she is raising a young girl, and in the other is Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Gradually, this fragile balance, built on a web of lies, secrets and back and forths, begins to come apart. Trapped, Judith ploughs forwards, with dizzying escalation.

The 20th Junior Award for Best Screenplay went to Seul à la noce (lit. Alone at the Wedding) by Thomas Keumurian. A young couple is getting married. Picture some friends from all over the world, an old building in the countryside, a bourgeois family on good form, a castle and fireworks. Add Henri: a dumb guy who is incapable of holding a conversation and a drink at the same time. During the occasion Henri will fall in love with the bride's sister, stir up the rivalry of a belligerent son-in-law, find himself singing in the Christian choir, and reveal, in spite of himself, the melancholy hiding behind the guests’ smiling faces.

It's also worth noting that the jury awarded a special jury prize to Zeno Graton for Sous la glace (lit. Under the Ice) in the junior section, whose plot unfolds in a juvenile detention centre, isolated in the Ardennes. Joseph, 17, struggles between his emotional dependence on a manipulative father, his passionate love for William, a rebellious adolescent in the centre, the preparation of his social reintegration project, and his imminent release, which frightens him most of all.

For the record, some of the winners of recent years include Blessed [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Sofia Djama, Ava [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léa Mysius
film profile
]
by Léa Mysius, After the War [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Annarita Zambrano
film profile
]
by Annarita Zambrano, A Taste of Ink [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Morgan Simon
film profile
]
by Morgan Simon and Far From Men [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by David Oelhoffen.

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(Translated from French)

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