Comic strip: “The color of things” by Swiss Martin Panchaud, dedicated to Angoulême

Angoulême Comics Festival: the winners of this 50th edition which ends this Sunday, January 29, 2023. AFP - YOHAN BONNET

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Angoulême, in the south-west of France, hosts the international comic strip festival as every year.

The awards ceremony for the best albums of this fiftieth edition was held on Saturday evening.

And this year again, the jury gave pride of place to more confidential, even radical works. 

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with our special correspondent in Angoulême

,

Sophie Torlotin

The Angoulême festival has chosen the avant-garde for its fiftieth edition.

The Fauve d'or for best album goes to a quasi-experimental graphic novel:

The Color of Things

.

A first attempt and a masterstroke for the 41-year-old Swiss designer, Martin Panchaud.

His story, in the style of a police investigation, shows how a 16-year-old teenager sets up a scam to recover money from a horse bet.

The novelty lies in the graphic treatment: each character is represented, seen from very high, by a circle of color. 

How do you tell a story with the minimum amount of information possible?

Very quickly, I had a character in the shape of a circle that I made speak, that I captioned, that I made dialogue with others... I saw that it worked!

I designed it so that when you start reading, you learn the system pretty quickly.

It takes three-four, five pages maximum and we forget the system, we imagine the bodies, the faces

...”     

The rest of the prize list crowns small publishing houses, or even mangas... Three Japanese cartoonists, who came to Angoulême for dedicated exhibitions, receive a Fauve.

Including the young star of Japanese comics, Hajime Isayama, 36, author of the worldwide success series

Attack on Titan

, who is leaving with a special

50th edition

Fauve .

The winners

Grand Prize of the City of Angoulême for the French Riad Sattouf, author in particular of

The Arab of the future  

Fauve d'or best album for

The Color of Things

 by Swiss Martin Panchaud, story of an overly loved, unloved teenager

Fauve special 50th edition to Japanese mangaka Hajime Isayama

Fauves of honor to Japanese mangakas Ryoichi Ikegami and Junji Ito

Fauve Special Jury Prize to

Animan

 by French director Anouk Ricard

Fauve from the series for

Blood Ties by

 Japanese mangaka Shuzo Oshimi

Fauve revelation for

A frog in autumn

by Swedish director Linnea Sterte

Heritage

Fawn with Stone Flowers by

 Japanese mangaka Hisashi Sakaguchi

Fauve of the alternative comic strip for

Forn de Calç

(Spain)

Fauve of the public France Télévisions in

Naphtaline

 from Argentina Sole Otero

Fauve of high school students in

Khat, diary of a refugee

 from the Spaniard Ximo Abadia

Fauve jeunesse for

La Longue Marche des dindes

 by the Swiss Léonie Bischoff and the American Kathleen Karr

The prize for artistic courage to the Russian Victoria Lomasko

On the sidelines of the festival, the festival off also distinguishes a foreign author with the Prize for artistic courage.

This year, it is the Russian designer in exile Victoria Lomasko who is highlighted.

This 44-year-old comic book author is known for her critical view of society and power in Russia and other former Soviet republics, exposed in reports published by several foreign media.

Short haircut, frank and direct gaze, Victoria Lomasko looks like a fighter.

With pencils as his only weapon, the 44-year-old artist denounces the transformation of his country, Russia, into an implacable dictatorship.

She made the decision to leave in March 2022, days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I was not preparing specifically to emigrate, but I spent the last two years in Russia because of the Covid because I could no longer leave the country.

I was very isolated, without the possibility of getting published.

When the war started, my decision was quite quick, and I left in ten days

 ”.

This left-wing feminist activist, follower of drawn reportage, took refuge in Europe, like, she says, the majority of Russian artists.

“ 

There are arrests every day in Russia, searches often accompanied by human rights violations, rapes, beatings, and we are witnessing the destruction of the archives of certain artists.

»

Based in Germany, Victoria Lomasko intends to continue to denounce the abuses of Vladimir Putin's regime.

His new book,

The Last Soviet Artist

, will appear in a few weeks in France.

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