14/04/2003

Enrique Urbizu's La caja 507 swept the boards at the 21st Crime Film Festival of Cognac in France. Urbizu won the Grand Prix that was presented by this year’s jury president, French actor Vincent Lindon, as well as the “Police” Special Award, the international critics’ award and the “Première”.

This is the seventh time that a European filmmaker has triumphed at this Festival since its inception in 1982. Past winners include Italy’s Ricky Tognazzi, who won in 1994 with La Scorta, the UK’s Danny Boyle for Shallow Grave in 1995 and Antonia Bird’s 1998 Face, and France’s Bernard Rapp Un affair du goût in 2000.

A number of European titles got an excellent reception at this year’s event: the French-Russian co-production entitled Un nouvel russe by Pavel Lounguine which won the Jury Award and will be released onto 50 French screens on 23 April. The film was produced by France’s CDP with a Euros5.41m budget, and received funding from Arte France Cinéma, France 2 Cinèma and Gimages Films, as well as Germany’s ZDF/Arte.

Corps à corps, a psycho-thriller by French directing duo Arthur Emmanuel Pierre and François Hanss, and starring Emmanuelle Seigner and Philippe Torreton shared the international critics’ award with the aforementioned feature by Spain’s Urbizu. Both titles will be released in France on 23 April.

(Translated from French)