Mr. & Mrs. Adelman, A Woman’s Life, A Bag of Marbles, Call My Agent, Thank You Mister Imada All Win at COLCOA French Film Festival

The Franco-American Cultural Fund, a partnership of the DGA, MPA, WGAW, and France’s Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (SACEM), announced today that Mr. & Mrs. Adelman, written by Nicolas Bedos and Dora Tillier, and directed by Nicolas Bedos, won the distinguished COLCOA Audience Award.

A Woman’s Life was awarded the COLCOA LAFCA Critics Award by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Jury at the 21 annual COLCOA French Film Festival. The film, co-written by Stéphane Brizé and Florence Vignon, and directed by Stéphane Brizé, will be released in the U.S. by Kino Lorber this month. 

A Woman’s Life also won the COLCOA Coming Soon Award,a prize given in association with KPCC 89.3, to a film presented with an attached U.S. distributor.

A Bag of Marbles, co-written and directed by Christian Duguay, won the Audience Special Prize while the Critics Special Prize went to Elementary, written and directed by Hélène Angel.

Little Gems received the Best Documentary Award, co-written and co-directed by Xavier de Lauzanne. The First Feature Award went to Tunisian-French co-production Hedi, written and directed by Mohamed Ben Attia. Introduced this year,the American Students Award went to Polina, written by Valérie Müller-Preljocaj and directed by Angelin Preljocaj and Valérie Müller-Preljocaj. This award was voted on exclusively by a jury of nine students from high schools and colleges.

Special Mentions were given by the audience to Like Crazy, the Italian-French co-production presented at the festival in association with Strand Releasing, which will release the film this month in the U.S., and to A Kid, a drama co-written and directed by Philippe Lioret. Distrib Films U.S. will release the film soon after the festival.

Presented in association with TV France International and TITRA Films, the COLCOA Television competition has three TV Series winners: Call My Agent (Season 2) was chosen best TV series by the audience, one year after it won for Season 1.The COLCOA Television Competition Jury gave the Best Series award to Beautiful Loser and a special prize to the StudioCanal series Midnight Sun. As for TV Drama, the audience favorite by a large majority was Plessis’ Girls, written and directed by Bénédicte Delmas, while the Jury chose Boulem Guerdjou’s drama Marion Forever 13 (Best TV series) and Arnaud Sélignac’s Box 27 (Jury Special Prize).

For the COLCOA Shorts Competitions, two films were awarded twice: Chasse Royale (Best Short Film given by the Jury and the Audience Special mention), and Thank You Mister Imada(Audience Award and Jury Special Mention). Special Prizes went to What Tears Us Apart? (Jury) and The Fisherman and the Businessman (Audience).

The COLCOA Web Series Competition was introduced at this year’s festival with six entries. The winner of this inaugural competition was the Studio+ series, Amnesia.

While 82 programs were presented at COLCOA this year, a total of 34 features and documentaries, 11 TV drama and TV series, 6 web series, and 19 short films competed for the 2017 COLCOA Awards. Films details: www.colcoa.org/

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