César Academy Co-Heads Talk 50th Anniversary Of Top French Film Awards

France’s César Awards mark their 50th ceremony at the Olympia Theatre in Paris this evening with swashbuckler The Count of Monte Cristo, star-crossed romance Beating Hearts and Mexico-set, Spanish language musical Oscar hopeful Emilia Pérez leading the nominations.

Other multi-nominated titles include asylum seeker drama Souleymane’s Story, thriller Misericordia and The Marching Band, a feel-good movie set in a declining manufacturing town in northern France.

Voted on by the just under 5,000 members of the Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques, or César Academy, France’s equivalent of the Oscars or Baftas, celebrate French productions released in the country between January 1 to December 31 of a given year.

“We’re particularly happy this year because there’s a rich variety in the nominations. There’s everything from popular mainstream cinema to more difficult, demanding films, which have found success in festivals, which is also a reflection of the DNA and diversity of French cinema,” says César Academy President Patrick Sobelman.

He was voted into the role last May alongside Ariane Toscan du Plantier as vice-president by the 176 members of the general assembly of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema (APC), the umbrella body overseeing the academy.

There has been criticism in some quarters over the fact that after Justine Triet’s Best Director and Film sweep for Anatomy of a Fall in 2024, not a single woman made it into either category this year.

Sobelman – who is a co-founder of the arthouse production collective of Agat Films – Ex Nihilo alongside Marie Balducci and Robert Guédiguian among others – points to the nominations in the Best First Film category, which include Agathe Riedinger’s Wild Diamond and Louise Courvoisier’s Holy Cow.

“That’s the future… and you also need to look over the course of five years, not one,” he says.

Women also dominate the documentary category with Mati Diop’s Berlinale 2024 winner Dahomey, Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias and Yolande Zauberman’s The Belle from Gaza in the running.

Toscan du Plantier, director of Cinema Distribution France and International at film and TV company Gaumont, has a special connection with the awards through her late father, producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier, who acquired the rights from the event’s original creator Georges Cravenne.

“I think everyone has a very personal emotional relationship with the Césars,” says Toscan du Plantier, who sold the rights back to the César Academy on her father’s death in 2003.  

“People in the cinema business, whether they’re technicians or actors, like to say it doesn’t matter whether you have a César or not, but as a distributor, I can see that when we program a film for January, the thing uppermost in the minds of the directors and actors is that it’s too far from the César vote.”

At the inaugural ceremony in April 1976, WW2 drama The Old Gun won Best Film, with lead Philippe Noiret clinching Best Actor. Romy Schneider took Best Actress for That Most Important Thing: Love. Bertrand Tavernier was feted with Best Director for historical drama Let Joy Reign Supreme, which also starred Noiret.

The first honorary Césars went to Ingrid Bergman and Diana Ross, who performed ‘Do You Know’, with other acts including Michel Legrand, who played an extract from his Oscar-winning score for Summer of ’42.

While it is fascinating to look back at how much French cinema and society has changed over the past five decades, Sobelman says the 50th ceremony will not be wallowing in nostalgia.

“Friday’s ceremony won’t be turned to the past or celebrating the first 49 ceremonies but rather anchored in the cinema of today and tomorrow,” says the veteran producer.

French cinema has good reason to celebrate after it garnered 44% of the 181M theatrical admissions, or rough $1.36B box office, in 2024, with local productions, A Little Something Extra and The Count Of Monte Cristo topping the annual chart, ahead of Vice-Versa 2 and Moana 2.

There will be one link with the first edition in the ceremony’s president Catherine Deneuve, who was nominated in 1976 for Best Actress for Lovers Like This, in the first of 14 nominations for the star, who has since won a two Best Actress Césars for The Last Metro (1981) and Indochine (1993).

True to her no-nonsense, outspoken reputation, the star revealed she is a reluctant returnee after a 15-year absence in an interview with public radio station France Inter ahead of the ceremony.

“I found it wasn’t serious enough… there are people who vote without seeing the films, people who don’t vote in the first round and then vote in the second round… I didn’t agree with it, like a lot of actors and actresses who don’t come anymore,” she explained.

She credited Bertrand Bonello, who is member of the executive Academy Office, for convincing her to attend.

“It was Bonello who absolutely wanted to see me there so even though I had said ‘no’, I ended up saying ‘yes’,” she revealed.

Bonello himself was last nominated for Best Film and Director for fashion world biopic Saint Laurent in 2015 but has never won a César.

Deneuve will kick off the evening and handover the Best Film award with another 13 cinema figures – spanning Jean-Pascal Zadi, Emmanuelle Béart, Alice Belaïdi, Cécile de France, Hafsia Herzi, Bouli Lanners, William Lebghil, Vincent Macaigne, Pio Marmaï, Vimala Pons, Raphaël Quenard, Ludivine Sagnier and Justine Triet – sharing presenting duties.

“It’s difficult for a single person to carry a three-hour ceremony and keep the same energy level as well as convey different registers of humor and emotion,” says Toscan du Plantier. “This collegial approach has a more rhythmic feeling with different people coming on stage and also allows us to involve a large number of artists.”

Pretty Woman and Erin Brockovich star Julia Roberts and French-Greek director Costa-Gavras (Missing, Adults in the Room), both past Oscar winners, will be feted with honorary Césars.

Roberts follows in the footsteps of international honorees such as Kate Winslet (2012), Scarlett Johansson (2014), Michael Douglas (2016), Robert Redford (2019), Cate Blanchett (2022),  and Christopher Nolan (2024).  

“We start figuring out the next year’s honorees very soon after the ceremony is over. Julia Roberts came together relatively quickly, and then Costa-Gavras, who is an immensely important filmmaker, seemed like an obvious choice as we have never celebrated him before,” says Toscan du Plantier.

Back from the Brink

The landmark 50th ceremony comes just five years after the César Academy imploded ahead of the 45th ceremony amid accusations of a lack transparency, gender equality and inclusion as well as complacency about sexual harassment within the film industry.

Long-running disquiet over the direction of travel of the academy flared-up after women’s rights activists protested against the fact that Roman Polanski’s An Officer And A Spy garnered the most nominations in the first round of voting, even though he faces statuary rape charges back in the U.S.

The unrest was further compounded after it came to light that directors Claire Denis and Virginie Despentes had been surreptitiously excluded from the guest list for the academy’s Soirée des Révélations, in spite of requests from the young talents being feted at the event for them to attend.

Amid growing criticism, the entire governing board resigned just two weeks ahead of the ceremony. The awards show went on against the odds but there was further drama on the night when actress Adèle Haenel and director Céline Sciamma stormed out of the auditorium in protest at the Best Director win for Polanski.

Haenel had just weeks previously pressed charges against director Christophe Ruggia accusing him of sexually assaulting her as a minor – in France’s first ever big #MeToo case – and saw Polanski’s wins as a smack in the face from French film industry. Ruggia was found guilty at the beginning of this year and given a two-year custodial sentence under house arrest with an electronic bracelet.

The crisis led to a major overhaul of the management structure, regulations and protocols around sexual violence at the César Academy.

One of the first measures was introducing gender parity in late 2020 across the César Academy’s Presidency, Academy Office and representatives of its 22 professional chapters, and also shortening the term of the president to a two-year mandate.

The body has also put in place a rigorous protocol around how to deal with cases of alleged sexual violence.

It recently launched a charter setting out its protocol around combating sexual violence in the industry, the signing of which will be a prerequisite for membership as of March 1. Under the charter, Academy members placed under official investigation for acts of violence, and in particular sexual violence, will be excluded from participating in its activities until the case has been resolved.

The charter also includes a regulation first introduced two years ago, excluding members under investigation rom the ceremony, which was bolstered last year, so that in the event of a win these members will not be presented with the award either publicly or privately on another occasion.

“The academy has become a lot more female. Women now account for 45% of the members, against a third in 2020,” says Sobelman.

In another sign of the Academy’s determination to combat sexual violence within the industry, actress, director and #MeToo activist Judith Godrèche was invited to address the ceremony in 2024.

The star, who ignited the #MeToo movement in France in 2024 with her decision to go public with sexual assault accusations against directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, used the address to appeal for a new era of truth.

On the question of whether Haenel might one day be invited back in a similar fashion, Sobelman and Toscan du Plantier acknowledge the role the actress played in raising awareness of sexual violence in the film industry, but suggest it is unlikely she would want to attend given the fact she has since turned her back on the cinema world.

“There are four years between the two. The institution was perhaps a bit behind with what was happening in wider French society but when you look at what happened between Adèle Haenel and Judith Godrèche, you can see how much things have changed not just at the Academy, but also the wider world,” says Toscan du Plantier

The Future

“We’ve done an enormous amount of work to transform the academy, which at the end of the day belongs to its 5,000 members, who each have an equal share… what we’ve tried to do over the last four years is make it as democratic, egalitarian and transparent as possible,” says Sobelman.

“That work has been done and while it needs regular updating, around issues such as sexual violence and harassment, and not just that, globally we have a good foundation, which has been proven to work by the last three ceremonies. We’re now in a period of reinforcing, clarifying and developing, to make the Césars an even stronger brand than it is today, and multiplying initiatives around the flagship event of the ceremony.”

Currently, the academy’s other awards and initiatives include the Daniel Toscan du Plantier Award, celebrating a producer who has excelled over the previous year, which was won by Holy Cow producer Muriel Meynard for this edition; the Revelations, celebrating emerging talent, and Les Nuit en Or, showcasing short films.

Two other key initiatives introduced in 2019 are aimed at young audiences: the César des Lycéens, which is voted on by 2,000 final year high school students, with the winner announced in March, and Un César à l’Ecole, in in which César-winning and nominated talents do school visits.

“If we want the public to keep going to the cinema, we need the younger generation, which has abandoned the cinema theater, to return, so these initiatives, which are less in the spotlight, are very important for us because they prepare the future,” says Ariane Toscan du Plantier.

Sobelman highlights the fact that unlike its Academy Awards or Bafta counterparts, the César Academy is a relatively compact organisation. The organisation does not receive any public money, with its funding coming from membership subscriptions, which are just 90 euros per year($93); the rights deal with Canal+ for the ceremony, sponsorship deals with BNP Paribas, Chanel, Fouquet’s Paris and Peugeot and other institutional partnerships.

““It’s a small permanent team of seven people working out of offices in the 15th arrondissement. They absolutely fantastic and devoted and work extremely well together,” he says.

Alongside dealing with internal issues within the organisation and wider French cinema world, another key challenge is keeping the awards relevant for the wider public.

The awards show, which is produced and broadcast as free-for-view by pay-TV giant Canal+, hit an historic audience low in 2022 of 1.3M viewers, which followed an already lackluster viewership of 1.6M in 2021. Prior to the pandemic it was pulling in around 2M viewers for a 11% share of the audience. There were green shoots of recovery last year with the ceremony drawing 1.86M viewers, for a 11.8 % share.

Cedric Klapisch (Pot Luck, Call My Agent!) has been drafted in as artistic director of the show, working closely with the crews of pay-TV giant Canal+ which oversees the show and broadcasts it live on free-to-view in France.

“It’s the third year we’ve done this. Cédric felt like a good choice in a year where alongside the entertainment factor, we’re looking to bring in all the different cinema professions,” says Sobelman. “Beyond his directing skill, he is also someone who is very engaged in the wider issues of the cinema community as an active member of the Directors’ Guild (la SRF).”

Both Sobelman and Toscan du Plantier acknowledge that the 50th ceremony will be another watershed moment for the César Awards and suggest its success is paramount.

“The aim is to have a great show which is both entertainment at the same time as celebrating cinema,” says Toscan du Plantier. “If this 50th ceremony is a success, it can only help with the reputation and appeal of the Césars into the future.”

The 50th César ceremony will be broadcast free-to-view by Canal+ this evening from 8.45pm CET