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Grand Prize Perfect Crime (El Crimen Perfecto, 2004, Spain) from Alex de la Iglesia with Guillermo Toledo and Monica Cervera	Jury Award Soundless (Lautlos, 2004, Germany) by Mennan Yapo.
First Film Award (‘Fresh Blood’ Award) Bad Players (Les mauvais joueurs/Vahé: working title, 2005 , France) by Frédéric Balekdjian with Pascal Elbé, Simon Abkarian and Isaac Sharry.	Special Crime Stories Jury Award The Third Wave (Tredje vågen, Den, 2003, Sweden) by Anders Nilsson.
Première Magazine Readers Award Perfect Crime (El Crimen Perfecto, 2004, Spain) from Alex de la Iglesia with Guillermo Toledo and Monica Cervera	Short Film Award Le caissier (2005, France) by Frédéric Pelle

 

The only winning film that I couldn't see was Soundless by Mennan Yapo, as several viewers who had seen it, advised me agaisnt it. I prefered to choose Jiang Hu, a Hong Kong feature, which although it didn't disappoint me, was no great vintage.
The Final Awards List comes close to my predictions since the winning film made the audience laugh widly almost relentlessly. After so many massacres and blood splattering, to find a funny film yet also carrying an acerbic critique of our consumierist society, made for a winning combination that took it to the top prize. After La Comunidad (Common Wealth in UK) got the prize in 2001, it is the second time that Alex de la iglesia is crowned in Cognac.

My only disagreement comes with the Jury Award where the Corean film The Big Swindle directed by Choi Dong-Hun in 2004 could and should have gotten the top banner. In this story of a multi-facetted caper, comic moments alternate with intense tragic ones yielding to a faultless construction in which all characters show a complex personality far from the faceless and souless silouettes that normally lurk in the background. Some spectacular scenes are worth their shares of wons, including the one with which the film starts: a car chase like I have never seen, or the police assault on a seedy den to catch robber gambling there. These gaming parlours are wrapped like hudge plastic hothouses and to evade the police the fleeing gangster slashes the plastic cover in a very spectacular fashion. Therefore I would have given without hesitation the Special Jury Award to this film. The Big Swindle is the first feature of the young Choi Dong-hun with whom I had the pleasure to have diner and talk to on the evening of my arrival.

The French film Les Mauvais Joueurs is a complete success. It’s been a long time since I saw such a fully accomplished French film. The script integrates the dramatic situation of clandestine chinese immigrants who are forced to bludgeon each other with axes in order to payback to exploiting handlers, the cost of their passage to France. But all the social elements are not artificially plastered onto the story. They are an integral part of it, without overplay or outsized effects. All the actors are excellent, like for example the character played by Pascal Elbé in scenes and with a dialog that bring out a duality of humour and emotion. It is a compassionate view of the little world of the Sentier quarter/neighborhood in Paris which survives as it can, with its love stories, happy times, deaths, stings and double-cross. Remember the name of the director: Frédéric Balekdjian who also wrote the screenplay and dialogs and who shows an undeniable talent for social film noirs with this first feature.

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One needs to underline that in the scheduling at this Murder Mystery Films Festival a lot of time each year is devoted in fact to murder mystery literature/writing.
The jury of the Noir mystery novel Grand Prize is composed of Alain Bévérini, Alfred Eibel, Joelle Losfeld, Claude Mesplède and Jean-Louis Touchant. Note that in the schedule handout Jean-Louis turns into Jean-Yves in the blink of a weekend. The jury which had deliberated a week before, gave the Foreign Book prize to George Pelecanos for Soul Circus. Since George Pelecanos couldn't come to Cognac, it was the well known translator Robert Pépin who received the prize. Logical since R. Pépin is the head of the Seuils Policiers series where the next Pelecanos will be published next october.

Jourdain, Lehane et Mesplède

With respect to French authors, the prize went to The Man With Saphired Lips by Hervé Le Corre who was touched to receive it from the hands of Dennis Lehane. The author of Mystic River, introduced in a sober yet efficient way by his French publisher François Guérif, was lauded by the Festival's audience to whom he expressed his sincere joy to be in Cognac while reminding them of his modest origins since he was " born in an American working class family". I had the pleasure to have lunch wih Dennis who expresses nothing but simplicity and kindness. Always open to questions, always a devoted listener, Dennis Lehane conquered the heart of the Festival audience. He will follow up on his European tour by travelling Monday to Barcelona.

Every year also, at Cognac, the Masques publishing house attributes its 'First Novel' prize. This year the palm went to Bernard Jourdain with his Last Shiver. The prize was given by last year's winner Jean-François Fournel. Fournel and Jourdain, two sympathetic storytellers, with two excellent novels, with whom we spent strong heartfelt moments.

 

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