22/11/2016 - The script by Clément Koch has scooped the Sopadin Prize, while Appels d'air by Pauline Mauroux won out in the Junior category

Last night, the Sopadin Prize for Best Screenplay unveiled the list of winners at its 30th edition. The Grand Prix was bestowed upon Dragon Boat, a screenplay by Clément Koch (who rose to fame with his stage play Sunderland, which was adapted for the big screen last year under the title Qui c'est les plus forts ? [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and who also co-wrote the TV movie Les Fusillés, which won the Audience Award at the 2015 Luchon Festival). It is set in a small town in Eastern France, where a group of women meet up once a week to row in an unusual Chinese boat bearing a dragon’s head. They have all been victims of breast cancer, an illness that continues to haunt them. The main aim of the programme is to prevent them from relapsing, but it is also a way for them to exorcise the fear that lurks inside them.

The jury, chaired by Julie Gayet, handed its Special Prize to On a volé Mona Lisa by Carole Giacobbi and Stéphane Vauthier, which depicts the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 by a young Italian mirror maker whose chief motive was his love for his daughter.

As for the 19th Junior Award for Best Screenplay, the victor was Appels d'air by Pauline Mauroux, which delves into Romania in 1972, where an underground feminist movement is gaining ground at the university. The members are rallying against decree number 770, which outlaws abortions and forces women to have at least four children before the age of 40.

Another accolade worth pointing out in the Junior category is the Special Jury Prize that served to single out Sarah Malléon for The Magnificent Gégé (in which two young lads on Martinique are trying to make it big in the world of cockfighting), while Jean-Loup Pochoy picked up a Special Mention for Les aliénés (set in 1938, as a Spanish immigrant is forcefully detained in a psychiatric hospital, where a young Parisian student in love with her gets hired in order to organise her escape).

As a reminder, the winner of the 2015 Grand Prix, De toutes mes forces [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Chad Chenouga (read the article), is currently in post-production (and is slated for release in France on 15 March 2017), as is Ava [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léa Mysius
film profile] by Léa Mysius (read the news – 2014 Junior Award), whereas A Taste of Ink [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Morgan Simon
film profile] by Morgan Simon (2014 Special Junior Jury Prize) scooped a Special Mention in the New Directors section at San Sebastián, and will go on general release in France on 1 February next year.

(Translated from French)