By Alistair Dabbs
The fiftieth version of the Angoulême Festival International de Bande-Desinée (FIBD) obtained the social gathering began final night time by selecting one among France’s personal, Raid Sattouf, as winner of its prime accolade for 2023.
As regular, the Grand Prix was awarded throughout the occasion’s opening ceremony, held the night earlier than the four-day competition opens to the common public. Up to 200,000 comedian followers are anticipated to descend – and ascend – upon the hilly competition city 75 miles north-east of Bordeaux’s wine area between 26 and 29 January.
“To come after Druillet, Moebius, Bilal was too abstract and inconceivable” Riad Sattouf declared in an electronic mail dashed off to French newspaper Le Monde after the end result was introduced final night time.
Yet the 44-year-old author-artist and film-maker was hardly an outsider for this 12 months’s Grand Prix, nor a stranger to the Angoulême awards podium. Exactly 20 years in the past he received the competition’s René Goscinny Award for younger authors, and Volume 3 of his satirical sequence Pascal Brutal was chosen as Best Album in 2010. In 2015, he received the ‘Fauve d’or’ for Best Album once more, for his first quantity of The Arab of the Future (revealed in the US by Pantheon.)
He was even caught up in the awards controversy throughout the infamous Angoulême competition in 2016, having been included in an solely male shortlist. Sattouf publicly insisted that he faraway from that 12 months’s record to permit nominations for girls comics creators. The creative route of FIBD modified dramatically in the years that adopted.
Sattouf’s most profitable sequence, The Arab of the Future, has bought greater than 3 million copies and has been translated into greater than 20 languages. It is essentially autobiographical, whereas additionally an unlikely comedy, recounting what it was prefer to develop up with a considerably boorish Syrian father and 100% French mom, and being shuttled between international locations and cultures.
Volume 6 of the sequence was France’s best-selling comics title of 2022 and is up for FIBD’s Best Album award but once more this 12 months. The winners of all the awards classes – Les fauves (‘the wild ones’)– might be introduced on Saturday night time.
Volumes 1 to 4 of The Arab of the Future and the first quantity of his common sequence for women, Esther’s Notebooks – the first quantity simply got here out in the US – can be found in English.
As effectively as his early work revealed in French satirical magazines equivalent to Fluide Glacial and Charlie Hebdo, Sattouf can be identified in his native France for his modest side-career as a film author and director. In 2004, he started drawing a cartoon sequence for Charlie referred to as The Secret Life of Youth wherein he depicted conversations overheard whereas on public transport in Paris. Some of those have been tailored right into a 2009 film referred to as Les Beaux Gosses (English title: The French Kissers), which received him a César Award the following 12 months for Best New Director.
In claiming the Grand Prix at Angoulême, Sattouf succeeds 2022’s winner, Quebec’s Julie Doucet, and means he might be honoured with a significant exhibition at subsequent 12 months’s occasion.
copyright © 2023 Alistair Dabbs
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