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NAMUR 2021 Awards

The Fam triumphs at the Namur International French-Language Film Festival

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- The Frédéric Baillif film won the Bayard d'Or as well as the Agnès prize at the 36th edition of the event

The Fam triumphs at the Namur International French-Language Film Festival
Director Frédéric Baillif with his Bayard d'Or for The Fam during the award ceremony (© Andy Tierce/FIFF)

The 36th Namur International French-Language Film Festival ended this weekend with the announcement of its prize list, which honoured the film by Swiss director Frédéric Baillif, The Fam [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fred Baillif
film profile
]
, discovered last winter at the Berlinale, in the Generation section. This social drama follows the journey of teenage girls placed in a foster home, a family environment, but marked by a retrograde institution. Present in Namur for the ceremony, the director explained that he had to change the foster home for the shooting at the last moment, and therefore also had to find new heroines since many of them are real young girls he met there. He underlined the harshness of a system against which he wanted to react by making this film, which also received the Agnès prize, the award for egalitarian imagination, which rewards a filmmaker whose work bears witness to an egalitarian, original and innovative artistic approach.

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The Special Jury Prize went to Întregalde [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Muntean
film profile
]
by Radu Muntean, a director who has often been featured at the festival, having won the Bayard d'Or in 2010 for Tuesday, After Christmas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Muntean
film profile
]
, and the Jury Prize already in 2006 for The Paper Will Be Blue.

The Bayard for Best Performance went to French actress Mélanie Thierry for Fabien Gorgeart's La Vraie famille [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, while the Best Cinematography Award went to Mathieu Laverdière for the film Souterrain, by Quebecer Sophie Dupuis.

Belgian cinema also did well, as Rachel Lang's second feature film Our Men [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rachel Lang
film profile
]
won the Bayard for Best Screenplay and the Critics' Prize; Patric Jean's essay film La Mesure des choses won a special mention from the Jury; and Aya [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Simon Coulibaly Gillard
film profile
]
, Simon Coulibaly Gillard's first feature film selected in the First Work Competition, won the Best Performance Award in this section for the young Marie-Josée Kokora, as well as the Cinevox Award.

The full list of winners is below:

Competition
Bayard d'Or for Best Film
The Fam [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fred Baillif
film profile
]
- Frédéric Baillif (Switzerland)

Special Jury Bayard
Întregalde [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Muntean
film profile
]
- Radu Muntean (Romania)

Bayard for Best Screenplay
Our Men [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rachel Lang
film profile
]
- Rachel Lang (Belgium/France)

Bayard for Best Cinematography
Mathieu Laverdière - Souterrain (Canada)

Bayard for Best Performance
Mélanie Thierry - La Vraie famille [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(France)

Special Mention
Théodore Pellerin - Souterrain (Canada)

Agnès Prize
The Fam - Frédéric Baillif (Switzerland)

Jury Special Mention
La Mesure des
choses - Patric Jean (Belgium/France)

First Film Competition

Bayard for Best First Film
Poppy Field [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Eugen Jebeleanu
film profile
]
- Eugen Jebeleanu (Romania)

Discovery Prize
Freda [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Gessica Généus (Haiti/France/Benin)

Best Performance Award
Marie-Josée Kokora- Aya (Belgium/France)

Petit Agnès Prize
Neptune Frost - Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman (Rwanda/United States)

Special Jury Mention
The Heroics [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Maxime Roy
film profile
]
- Maxime Roy (France)

Other Prizes

Junior Jury Prize
Animal [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
- Cyril Dion (France)

Critics' Prize
Our Men [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rachel Lang
film profile
]
- Rachel Lang (Belgium/France)

Cinevox Prize
Aya - Simon Coulibaly Gillard

RTBF Prize
The Divide [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Catherine Corsini
film profile
]
- Catherine Corsini (France)

BeTV Prize
The Divide - Catherine Corsini 

Audience Award for Best Fiction Feature
Freda - Gessica Généus 

Audience Award for Best Documentary
Les Mots de la fin - Gaëlle Hardy, Agnès Lejeune (Belgium)

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(Translated from French by Manuela Lazic)

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