Variety reports that Antonin Baudry's two-part World War II epic took the festival's top audience prize as the 30th edition drew more than 18,000 attendees.
Antonin Baudry's two-part World War II epic "De Gaulle" has won the top audience prize at the American French Film Festival in Los Angeles, Variety reports. The awards were announced at the closing ceremony on Sunday, 8 November, capping the festival's 30th anniversary edition, which Variety says drew more than 18,000 attendees, with several screenings, including the opening and closing nights, selling out. According to the trade publication, both parts of the film were shown back to back on Saturday to packed theatres and received a seven-minute standing ovation.
The film stars Simon Abkarian as the French general and Simon Russell Beale as Winston Churchill, and charts de Gaulle's rise during the war and his effort to build a Resistance movement after France's surrender in 1940. Variety says the first part, "De Gaulle: Resistance", opened in US theatres and on transactional video-on-demand over the weekend through Samuel Goldwyn Films, while the second part, "De Gaulle: Liberty", is due in early December. The report adds that Pathé has sold the film to China for a wide release and that it is currently playing in the UK, where it is described as this year's highest-grossing French film; these commercial claims come from Variety and were not independently checked.
Other prizes went to Marine Atlan's debut "La Gradiva", which took the Critics Award for best film, and to Mélisa Godet's "A Place for Her", which won the First Feature Award. Vincent Munier's "Whispers in the Woods" won the Documentary Film Award, and "The Green Eyes" by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh took the American Students Award. On the television side, "Alice: Pioneer of Cinema" won the Audience Series Award. The festival's lineup included 31 fiction features, 11 series, four documentaries and 14 shorts, and it is organised by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a partnership between the Directors Guild of America, the Motion Picture Association, SACEM and the Writers Guild of America West.
