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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3 mins
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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