Reims Polar Film Festival Unveils Prizes, Pays Tribute to Walter Hill, Martin Campbell, Vincent Lindon
variety.comElsa Keslassy International CorrespondentReims Polar, a new international festival set in Northern France and dedicated to police thrillers, has awarded Wen Shipei’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” Adikhan Yerzhanov’s “Assault” and Lado Kvataniya’s “The Execution.” The selection of Reims Polar is curated by Bruno Barde, who is also the artistic director of the Deauville American Film Festival. “Assault,” a dead-pan thriller set fictional village in rural Kazakhstan and revolving around a school hostage situation, won the festival’s Grand Prize Award.
Yerzhanov, a prolific Kazakh director, previously directed “The Gentle Indifference of the World” which played at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2018.
The Reims Polar jury prize went to a pair of feature debuts, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” a Chinese film which world premiered out of competition at last year’s Cannes, and Russian filmmaker Lado Kvataniya’s “The Execution,” a thriller inspired by the case of an infamous Soviet-era serial killer.
The Jokers Films is distributing “The Execution” in France. “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” follows a young man who believes he has caused a fatal accident and develops an ambiguous relationship with the dead man’s widow.
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