Starring Léa Seydoux,  Mia Hansen-Løve’s “One Fine Morning” won this year’s Europa Cinemas Cannes Label for best European film at the 2022 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

Announced Thursday by Europa Cinemas, ahead of the closing ceremony this evening, the prize is one of two at Directors Fortnight, and awarded by one of the sidebar’s partners given the section is non-competitive.

A second partner plaudit, the SACD Prize, handed out by France’s Writers’ Guild,  will be announced later today at an awards ceremony.

“One Fine Morning” was always a frontrunner for a prize at Directors’ Fortnight, though never a shoo-in. The award comes just three days after Sony Pictures Classics announced it had acquired North American, Latin American and Middle East rights to the film.

Marking Hansen-Løve’s return to Directors’ Fortnight after Cannes competition player “Bergman Island,” “One Fine Morning” stars Séydoux as a woman stretched between long-time single motherhood, an increasingly ailing father and complicated new love affair.

“After two uneven English-language features, Mia Hansen-Løve returns to French, and to form, in this gently moving reflection on parenting one’s children and parents at once,” Variety’s Guy Lodge observed in his Cannes review.

“It’s a welcome change of pace, too, for the ubiquitous Léa Seydoux, recently seen on screen as almost everything (Bond girl, body-horror muse, glamazonic national symbol) but an ordinary woman, and projecting a warm sense of human wear and tear that we too rarely get to see from her,” he added.

“Mia Hansen-Løve’s ‘One Fine Morning’ is a beautifully made film with very relatable and well-drawn characters. Her observation of human life is astutely drawn – the tussle for a single mother between her child, her sick father and her lover,” a Europa Cinemas Network jury said.

It added: “We all appreciated her subtle cinematic style and her magnificent editing. Léa Seydoux is as superb as ever. The Europa Cinemas Label will help maximise the film’s presence on screens around Europe at a time when competition for space has never been higher.”

“One Fine Morning” is a Les Films Pelleas production. The producers are Philippe Martin, Gerhard Meixner and David Thion. International sales are handled by Les Films du Losange

Created at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2003, the Label’s juries are made up of managers of theaters belonging to the Europa Cinemas Network. Label movies receive incentives for their promotion. Europa Cinemas exhibitors are also encouraged to extend Label-winning titles’ run at their theaters.

The Cannes Europa Cinemas Label jury this year comprised Sarah Beaufol (Cinéma La Comète, Châlons-en Champagne, France); Truls Foss (Vega Scene, Oslo, Norway);  Anita Pócsová (Cinema Lumière, Bratislava, Slovak Republic) and Igor Stankovic (Kombank dvorana, Belgrade, Serbia).

The Label is also awarded at Berlin, Venice, Karlovy Vary and Locarno.  Recipients of the Label honoured at Cannes in the past include: “A Ciambra,” “Mustang,” “12:08 East of Bucharest,” “La Pivellina,” “Le Quattro Volte,” “The Repentant,” “The Selfish Giant,” “Les Combattants,” “Mercenaire” and “Alice et le Maire” and “A Chiara” last year.

Source: Read Full Article