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Critic’s Week at Cannes at 8th FICM

It is the first time in 20 years that a documentary has been selected for this prize at Critic’s Week, a parallel section of the festival whose mission is to discover new talents. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Loach, Wong Kar Wai, Jacques Audiard, Arnaud Desplechin, Gaspar Noé, François Ozon and Julie Bertucelli are among those who have received this award.

Armadillo is the name of the Danish military camp in Helmand province in Afghanistan where the documentary was filmed.  It focuses on Meds and Daniel who are serving their first mission at the camp. The production team was able to get unprecedented access to the enclave to follow a platoon of Danish soldiers at war.

Following the awards ceremony at Cannes, Janus, who has won several awards, including the IDFA for his documentaries Ticket to Paradise and Love on Delivery, said that Armadillo “is a very serious film about a very serious theme. I hope it attracts [people’s] attention and reaches an international audience.”

Other films from Critic’s Week that will be shown in Morelia include: Sound of Noise, a Swiss-French co-production directed by Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, winner of the Young Critics prize at the 49th edition of Critic’s Week.

Sound of Noise tells the story of police officer Amadeus Warnebring, son of a family with a long musical tradition. Warnebring, however, hates music and is about to face his worst case yet. A group of six eccentric drummers, led by revolutionary Sanna, has decided to launch a full-scale attack using the city -- its buildings and machinery -- as their instrument. In other words, the city will be taken over by a group of “music terrorists.”

The other two films in the program are Copacabana by Marc Fitoussi and The Myth of the American Sleepover by David Robert Mitchell.

Copacabana is a French comedy starring Isabelle Huppert, who has won the Palme d’Or in Cannes on two occasions, the first for Violette (1978) and the second for The Piano Teacher (2001). Huppert interprets Babou, a woman who doesn’t seem to care about anything -- work, husbands, or responsibility. One day she finds out that her daughter is ashamed of her and doesn’t want to invite her to her wedding. Babou decides to prove to her daughter that she can change by first going out to search for a job.

The Myth of the American Sleepover, which won a special jury prize at the SXSW Film Festival, is about four adolescents -- Maggie, Rob, Claudia and Scott -- who in their frenetic search for great adventures discover those moments which years later they will recall with nostalgia.

Since its beginning, the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) formed a partnership with Critics’ Week. Each year, some of the winning films at FICM are shown during Critic’s Week. Likewise, a selection of the feature films in CW, including the Grand Prize winner, is presented at FICM. Cinépolis has given this award for the past seven years as part of its effort to support young directors and promote new trends and quality cinema on an international level.
 
In the past six editions, the winners of this prize have included: Gary, by Nassim Amaouche (France, 2009); Snow, by Aida Begic (Bosnia - Herzegovina, Germany, France and Iran, 2008); XXY, by Lucía Puenzo (Argentina, 2007); Les amitiés maléfiques, by Emmanuel Bourdieu (France, 2006); Me and you and everyone we know, by Miranda July (United States, 2005); Brodeuses, by Éleonore Faucher France, 2004) and Or (Món tresor), by Keren Yedara (France-Israel, 2004).