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Cannes Critics’ Week opens Call for Entries

Clara Sánchez translated by Cindy Hawes

The CW will choose seven films to compete for the Critic’s Grand Prize, selected by a jury of international film critics and journalists. The winner will receive 5,000 euros by Cinépolis, which has given this award for the past eight years. All first films are eligible to compete for the Golden Camera award.

The CW is a prestigious sidebar to the Cannes International Film Festival founded in 1962 by the Film Critics’ Union of France and dedicated to discovering and promoting young international filmmaking talent. Among those who have participated in CW are Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Loach, Wong Kar Wai, Jacques Audiard, Arnaud Desplechin, Gaspar Noé, François Ozon, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Julie Bertucelli.

Thanks to the partnership between CW and the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), a selection of winning films from FICM is screened at Critics’ Week. Likewise, FICM presents some of the feature films from CW, including the winner of the Critics’ Grand Prize.

Films that have received the Critics’ Grand Prize include: Armadillo, by Januz Metz (France, 2010); Adieu 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).

Of the filmmakers selected by Critics’Week, four have won the Golden Camera Award: Christopher Boe for Reconstruction (2003); Keren Yedaya for Or (2004); Miranda July for Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) and Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen for Meduzot (2007). Valeria Gaï Guermanika received a Special Mention in 2008 for Everybody Dies But Me.

Applications for the 50th edition of Cannes Critics’ Week should be submitted online at www.semainedelacritique.com no later than March 24, 2011. Results will be announced by email on April 1.