Cannes (AFP)

Created in 2010, the "Queer Palm", LGBT prize, is still not on the official list of the Cannes Film Festival, deplores the actor and director Nicolas Maury who chairs the 2021 jury for this distinction which he considers to be is "a central price that does not deserve to be sidelined".

"We are not ugly ducklings! It is a prize like any other prize. I will find that even although it is integrated into the official ceremony," he said in an interview with AFP .

Awarded since 1987 as part of the Berlin International Film Festival, the "Teddy Award", another LGBT prize, is officially recognized and included in the Berlinale prize list.

"La + Queer Palm + wants to put in major all that is very often in minor in the company, by always rewarding a daring film, proposing an openness and a humanity. A film which counts the destinies of people sometimes discriminated against or badly regarded, or rather finally watched and listened to ", underlines Nicolas Maury, revealed in the French series" Ten percent "in the role of an assistant both extrovert and lunar.

"This year, the Cannes selections often feature fractured and wounded beings who will perhaps reorganize the damage and brutality, with a desire to want to right the wrongs", also noted the director of "Chiffon Boy", his first film. .

- Sciamma, Dolan, Guiraudie -

But for Nicolas Maury, "It is not the time of presence on the screen of a different couple that counts. It's very beautiful to make a whole story about two women who love each other".

The jury he chairs brings together singer and actress Aloïse Sauvage, actress and producer Roxane Mesquida, director Josza Anjembe and graphic designer Vahram Muratyan.

They will have to choose from 17 feature films from Cannes selections including "Benedetta" by Paul Verhoeven "and" Les Amours d'Anaïs "by Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet.

The creator of the Queer Palm Franck Finance-Madureira is pleased for his part with the strong presence of LGBT themes in the selections of the Cannes Film Festival: "this proves that the + queer + question is increasingly infused in cinema".

In 2019, the LGBT prize in Cannes rewarded the French Céline Sciamma for "Portrait of the young girl on fire", a love story between two women in the 18th century, which met with great success internationally. In the past, "Laurence Anyways" by Xavier Dolan or "L'Inconnu du lac" by Alain Guiraudie were also distinguished by the "Queer Palm".

While waiting for the award ceremony, Friday at 10 p.m., Nicolas Maury takes a lucid look at the daily exercise of the red carpet and glamor at the Cannes Film Festival: "it is not so easy to appear ... Sometimes, it is t is as if I was absent from myself, and sometimes I join together ... We have beautiful clothes, beautiful jewelry. It's also a way of positioning oneself, a way of being in the world and of being in the world. reflect on all these codes on masculinity ... ".

© 2021 AFP