At the Angoulême Festival, it’s America again. After having rewarded Emil Ferris two years ago, the Angoulême jury awarded its Fauve d’or, album of the year prize, to “The hunting accident” by David L. Carlson and Landis Blair , during a ceremony hosted by comedian Thomas VDB and broadcast, with a little difficulty, live on the France Inter website. A way for the festival to mark its international vocation but also to pay tribute to the quality and originality of another “made in USA” comic, far from comics and its superheroes.
On the ceremony side, Covid-19 obliges, the atmosphere was necessarily intimate, around fifty people being allowed to enter the Angoulême theater. A sofa, a green plant, a red lamp, a small cage with the Fauves, a comedian who makes jokes and few recipients present.
It was all the more intimate as the spectators were deprived of the first 20 minutes of retransmission, then of the end by major network problems. It had at least the merit of allowing almost all the authors present on stage to recall their anger at the precariousness of the profession …
A work that can be tasted like a novel
On the palmares side, however, there was much to be congratulated on. “The hunting accident”, the winner, a black and white block of 472 pages, is inspired by a true story. That of Matt Rizzo, who is discovered blind and in the company of his son in a small apartment in Chicago, in 1959. His blindness is believed to be due to a hunting accident. But soon, the truth will turn out to be different: in the past little gangster, he was actually injured during a hold-up. He tells everything to his offspring and especially those years in prison with Nathan Leopold, a child killer. A man who will transform his life, open it up to the powers of words and books … The work, dark but lit from within, literary and demanding, can be tasted in chapters, like a novel.
“Peau d’Homme” triumphs again
Another essential album of the year is also on the list of this 2021 edition: “Peau d’Homme”, by Hubert and Zanzim, won the high school student prize. This Renaissance fable with very contemporary concerns (homosexuality, gender issues, women’s rights, etc.) has already won six awards in the year, including recently the Canal BD bookseller award. We had also chosen it as the best album of the year as part of the “Etoiles du Parisien”.
The France Télévisions Audience Prize is awarded to another great success: the sensitive “Anaïs Nin, sur la mer des mensonges” by Léonie Bischoff.
The jury, chaired by screenwriter Benoît Peeters, chose to award its “special prize” to “Dragman”, English history, of a drag-queen superhero, while the SNCF polar prize was awarded to “GoSt 111 », A dive into the world of police informers.
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Our favorites for fun and culture.
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The Goscinny Prize, rewarding a screenwriter, goes to Loo Hui Phang for the captivating “Black-out”, a romanticized evocation of racism on Hollywood sets.
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