And the winner of the Magritte for Best First Film is...

by Aurore Engelen

08/05/2013 - Three months after the Magritte Awards, the laureate of the Best First Film Award is about to be revealed. Still in the running: Dead Man Talking, Mobile Home and Torpedo

One prize was not announced on February 2nd during the 3rd Magritte ceremony, the Belgian Cinema Prizes: the Best First Film award. In fact, twelve films were competing for this first edition, ie. all the first films by Belgian directors which were eligible for the Magritte for the Best Film (out of a total of 19). On the Belgian audiovisual scene, first films represent a large share of the production, and it was expected and legitimate for the Delvaux Academy to create a prize to reward first opuses.

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However, the designation of the winner of this new Magritte took a slightly unusual turn. Instead of calling onto professionals (already mobilized in the “Best Film” category), the Academy decided to address the public, and allow the audience to award the prize. To do this, it partnered with the Quadrature du Cercle (a network of cinema programmers for cultural centres), with the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.

A vote of the public was therefore organized on the Cinema Magritte website, accompanied by a specific system, on both the Internet and black screens. More than 3,000 voters participated in the vote, between mid-February and the end of April 2013. During the same period, 18 cultural centres in Wallonia and Brussels held over 30 screenings of the films that were competing for the prize. Alongside the screenings organised in cultural centres, spectators who wished to do so could find the 12 movies on VoD throughout the month of April,.

With all the votes counted, the public designated its three favourites: Dead Man Talking [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Patrick Ridremont, Mobile Home [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by François Pirot (both were among the four finalists for the Magritte for the Best Film) and Torpedo [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (article) by Matthieu Donck. The name of the film with the most votes will be revealed on May 20th during the Evening of Francophone Belgian Cinema to be held in Cannes.