Haut et Court’s Carole Scotta and Barbara Letellier were named best producers of the year at the 16th annual edition of France’s Academy of Film Arts & Sciences’ Daniel Toscan du Plantier Prize held on Monday night (February 14) in Paris.
The duo are notably behind Dominik Moll’s investigative drama The Night Of The 12th, which has been sweeping awards season in France, winning the Best Film Lumiere Award and nominated for 10 César awards.
A swanky gala dinner celebrated the winning pair along with the finalists for the prize, previous award recipients and all of the producers who have at least one film vying for a 2023 César award. The event was held at the InterContinental Paris – Le Grand hotel in a lavish ballroom along with César Academy president Véronique Cayla, vice president Patrick Sobelman and general delegate Gregory Caulier and a who’s who of France’s top producers.
Scotta founded Haut et Court in 1992 and was joined by Letellier in 1995. Over the past 30 years, Haut et Court has become a prolific art house film production company whose films are regularly prized at festivals such as Cannes and Venice from Laurent Cantet’s Palme d’Or-winning The Class in 2008 to Xavier Legrand’s Custody which won two Lions in Venice in 2017 to more recent films such as Kiliam Riedhof’s 2022 Locarno title You Will Not Have My Hate and 2021 Berlin Competition title Memory Box and Panorama film Copilot.
Upcoming Haut et Court films include Pierre Jolivet’s Brittany-set environmental investigative drama Green Tide, Claude Barras’ animated You’re Not the One I Expected and Olivier Babinet’s Normal with Benoit Poelvoorde.
The company has also branched out into series production in recent years and is behind titles such as Possessions and The Returned for Canal+ and upcoming psychological thriller Constellation for Apple TV+.
Scotta told Screen that winning the award, chosen by her peers, was “stimulating” for the duo and the company as a whole and that winning for The Night of the 12th was particularly touching. “This film represents our DNA. It’s an original movie that epitomises how we want to define ourselves,” she explained.
Set in Grenoble, the investigative drama starring Bastien Bouillon and Bouli Lanners follows a police unit trying to get to the bottom of a haunting murder case and explores issues of gender, violence and policing politics in France.
“It’s not a commercial film on paper, it’s not driven by big stars, yet it worked,” Scotta said of the box office success. Released in July via Haut et Court’s distribution arm, The Night Of The 12th sold a solid 500,000 tickets in the territory during its local run. Memento has sold the film internationally to a host of territories including to Film Movement in North America and Picturehouse Entertainment for the UK and Ireland.
Scotta and Letellier were crowned victorious among 50 finalists who were pre-selected for the coveted honour including veteran producers like Gaumont’s Sidonie Dumas, Pathé’s Jérôme Seydoux and Ce Qui Me Meut’s Bruno Levy, alongside active rising production companies such as Chi-Fou-Mi Productions’ Hugo Sélignac, Nolita Cinema’s Maxime Delauney, Romain Rousseau and Mathieu Ageron and The Family’s Elisa Soussan and Kev Adams.
Honouring Daniel Toscan du Plantier
The Prix Daniel Toscan du Plantier is named after the prolific French producer, former president of Unifrance and president of the César Academy from 1992 to 2003 who died 20 years ago.
The Academy paid him a special tribute at Monday night’s event, two decades after the effervescent industry figure died unexpectedly during the Berlin Film Festival in 2003.
French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak gave a speech honouring the memory of Toscan du Plantier after organisers screened a moving short film from Pierre-Henry Salfati dedicated to the late producer blending archival footage spanning his long career and film clips.
Malak cited Toscan du Plantier’s “clairvoyance and enthusiasm” and said the French cinema personality “expanded the horizons of French cinema in France and internationally,” calling him “crazy about the seventh art” and adding that when he died, “French cinema lost one of its strongest defenders.”
The winner for the Prix Daniel Toscan du Plantier is chosen by an electoral college of 1,641 voters including select Academy members plus the previous year’s César winners and all of the artists and film crew members nominated for a Cesar since 2008. The vote takes place by secret ballot and is revealed by a bailiff on the evening of the Producers Dinner.
Producers who have made a minimum of two films, at least one of which was released in 2022, are eligible for the prize. Last year’s winners were Rectangle Productions’ Edouard Weil and Alice Girard, notably behind Audrey Diwan’s Venice Golden Lion-winning Happening and Valerie Lemercier’s Aline, who were also at the 2023 dinner to fête their peers.
The 2023 Daniel Toscan du Plantier Prize ceremony and gala dinner was held in partnership with BNP Paribas Group. The 48th César Awards will take place on February 24th at Paris’ L’Olympia concert venue.
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