The Grand Prix of the Angoulême International Comics Festival was awarded to Riad Sattouf on Wednesday.
The 50th edition of the Angoulême International Comics Festival (FIBD) presented its supreme reward this Saturday: the prize for the best album of the year. The Fauve d’or was awarded to “The color of things” (here and there), by the Swiss author Martin Panchaud. The jury for this 2023 vintage, chaired by Alexandre Astier, made its choice from an official selection of 46 works.
The Fauve d’or rewards, as its name suggests, the best comic book album published in French during the previous year, not limited to French production: in 2022, it was the Brazilian Marcello Quintanilha who won the statuette for his book Listen, pretty Márcia.
The 2023 edition of the Festival opened on Thursday. The day before, the Grand Prix had been awarded to Frenchman Riad Sattouf for his entire career. The author of Notebooks of Esther and of The Arab of the future won against Catherine Meurisse and the American Alison Bechdel.
Controversial edition
The annual event will end this Sunday, after a particularly controversial edition. A few weeks ago, the festival found itself under fire from critics after the announcement of an exhibition devoted to the author of comic strips Bastien Vivès.
A petition asking for the cancellation of this one had collected several tens of thousands of signatures, accusing the author of trivializing incest and pedocrime through his works. At the same time, old disturbing statements by the artist have been unearthed by Internet users – “Incest, me, it excites me to death”, he had notably declared to the site Miss in 2017.
The Angoulême comic book festival, evoking “threats”, had finally announced the cancellation of the exhibition. For his part, Bastien Vivès had made his mea culpa. Despite everything, the unease remained palpable throughout the duration of the festival, where two antagonistic debates were organized on Friday at the Angoulême comic book festival to tackle the case.
Source- https://www.bfmtv.com/people/bandes-dessinees/festival-d-angouleme-2023-martin-panchaud-remporte-le-fauve-d-or-pour-la-couleur-des-choses_AN-202301280350.html