Untouchable co-star Omar Sy clinches best actor and The Artist’s Bérénice Béjo best actress. Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation picks up best foreign film.

The Artist swept the board at France’s César awards on Friday, picking up best film, best director for Michel Hazanavicius and best actress for Bérénice Béjo but much lauded lead Jean Dujardin missed out on best actor to Untouchable co-star Omar Sy.

 

Other awards for The Artist included best original music for Ludovic Bource, best cinematography for Guillaume Schiffman and best art direction for Laurence Bennett.

 

Iranian director  Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation won best foreign film,  beating eight other nominations which included Black Swan, The King’s Speech, Incendies and Melancholia.

Actor and director Guillaume Canet presided over the 37th ceremony for the Césars at the Chatelet Theatre in the heart of Paris. Kate Winslet was presented with an honorary César during the event.

Other prizes went to Pierre Schoeller’s political drama The Minister (L’exercice de l’Etat) for best screenplay. The picture also picked up best sound (Olivier Hespel, Julie Brenta, Jean-Pierre Laforce).

Spanish actress Carmen Maura won best supporting actress for her performance in The Women on the Sixth Floor. Michel Blanc picked up best supporting actor for The Minister.

The award for best female newcomer was shared by Naidra Ayadi in Polisse and Clotilde Hesme for her performance in Angele and Tony as a troubled ex-convict who ends up romantically linked to a fisherman in a small Normandy port.

Hesme’s co-star Grégory Gadebois won best male newcomer for his performance as her taciturn love interest Tony in the film.

Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza shared the prize for best adaptation for their work on Carnage.

 

Best editing went to Laure Gardette and Yann Dedet for their Polisse cut. Anaïs Romand picked up best costume for House of Tolerance (L’Apollonide, souvenirs de la maison close).

Best short went to Olivier Trener’s The Piano Tuner (L’Accordeur), which recently scored a hat-trick at Unifrance’s MyFrenchFilmFestival.com where it won the public, press and social networks prizes.

The Rabbi’s Cat won best feature-length animation and Sylvain Estibal’s When Pigs Have Wings best first feature.

Best feature-length documentary went to Christian Rouaud’s Tous au Larzac, capturing the fight by farmers in the Massif Central against the planned expansion of a military base onto their land. 

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