The filmmaker, born in 1981, succeeds the documentary maker Sébastien Lifshitz, who won last year, the president of this prize, one of the most prestigious in French cinema, Gilles Jacob, told AFP.

In his film, Arthur Harari paints in nearly three hours the portrait of a Japanese soldier who wanted neither peace nor death, and who continued to fight thirty years after the Second World War.

Composed of twenty critics and personalities, under the chairmanship of the former president of the Cannes Film Festival, the Louis-Delluc Prize jury also awarded, in the first film category, "Vers la Bataille", by Aurélien Vernhes -Lermusiaux.

Shot in Cambodia and in Japanese, "Onoda" was screened in Cannes at the opening of the "Un Certain Regard" section, but it left empty-handed from the Cannes fortnight.

Released in the midst of a health crisis, it only made 45,512 theaters.

Its draft for the Louis-Delluc Prize is a great consolation prize for a film hailed by critics, and the jury has also announced that it wants a new theatrical release to be organized.

"If we find the possibility of having a significant output, we will do it," reacted to AFP the distributor of the film Jean Labadie, believing that the health pass had "killed the film" in theaters.

Not won however: the cinemas remain "congested by all the films which have accumulated" since the beginning of the health crisis, underlines the boss of the Pact.

"Amazing movie"

"Onoda" and its director, whose second film after "Diamant Noir" (2016), won against confirmed filmmakers who were also in the running (Valérie Lemercier for "Aline", Arnaud Desplechin for "Tromperie ", Bruno Dumont for" France "...).

Onoda "is a magnificent film about the meaning of life based on an extraordinary story," added the general secretary of the award, Sophie Avon, critic for Sud-Ouest.

The subject is itself staggering with this soldier who does not understand that the war is over ", underlined Gilles Jacob." The winner was chosen almost unanimously, which is not frequent ".

Director Arthur Harari (d) and Japanese assistant director Yu Shibuya (l) at the Cannes Film Festival for the presentation of the film "Onoda" in the "Un certain regard" section, July 8, 2021 CHRISTOPHE SIMON AFP / Archives

With this second feature film, the director looks back on the life of Onoda, an emblematic figure in Japanese history, who, by going into exile for nearly thirty years in the jungle in the Philippines, refused the Japanese surrender of 1945.

An intimate and interior odyssey of a loser of the Second World War who preferred denial to reality, bringing with it several comrades of misfortune, but also a historical fresco on the madness of a soldier.

Hero or anti-hero?

The film does not stand out, even if it is precisely this ambivalence that seduced the director.

"I couldn't decide on his courage or his lack of courage. I think he is as much a coward as a courageous man. That's what interested me in this story, it's the contradictory dimension" , he explained in Cannes.

"When I discovered this story, it immediately fascinated me. I think it was the question, in a way, of refusing to accept reality as it is that jumped at me. in the eyes, "he added.

An extraordinary destiny "which goes beyond strictly moral questions".

"It's morally complicated to judge but it's humanly interesting," he said.

Very worked with its long tracking shots, the staging manages to underline the mystery of a being difficult to pin down but whose stubbornness has everything of a mystical quest.

The filming of this international production, in Japanese, was also a challenge for Arthur Harari, who does not speak the language.

© 2022 AFP