The 46th César Awards, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, announced winners at a socially distanced ceremony in Paris that was punctuated by protests against theater closures in the country.
Josep, the feature directorial debut of French comic artist and political cartoonist Aurel, was named best animated feature. The 2d-animated film tells the story of Spanish illustrator Josep Bartoli, who fled Franco’s dictatorship in Spain in 1939, only to end up interned in a French concentration camp that had been set up to detain political refugees. It was selected as part of Cannes Festival’s line-up last year and has won numerous awards, including best animated feature at the European Film Awards.
The film sold almost 200,000 tickets on its release in France, which was curtailed when cinemas shut in late October in response to the pandemic. A U.S. distributor has not been announced. At the Césars, it beat Rémi Chayé’s Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary, which won the top feature prize at last year’s Annecy Festival and qualified for this year’s Oscars, and Joann Sfar’s Little Vampire.
