Patrice Chereau's Intimacy, has been awarded the Louis Delluc prize. The film, adapted from a novel by Hanif Kureishi and Chereau's first English-language title, has already won Berlin's Golden Bear as well as a Silver Bear for female lead Kerry Fox and was lately nominated for the European Films Awards.

Chereau is currently working on Betsy And The Emperor, which is produced, like Intimacy, by Charles Gassot's company Telema. The film, which is currently in development, is based on a script sent to Chereau by Al Pacino, and is about Napoleon's last months before his death on the island of Sainte-Helene and his friendship with a thirteen year-old girl.

The Louis Delluc Prize, which crowns the best French film of the year, was awarded last year to Claude Chabrol's Merci Pour Le Chocolat, and the other nominees for the 2001 award were Manoel de Oliveira's Je Rentre A La Maison, Benoit Jacquot's Tosca, Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day, Jacques Rivette's Va Savoir and Claude Lanzmann's Sobibor, 14 octobre, 16 heures.

The Louis Delluc prize for best first film went to Eugene Green's Toutes Les Nuits.