In the shadow of the cathedral where Clovis was once crowned the first king of the Franks, here are the cops, mafiosos and other ultra-violent psychopaths who are severely breaking out today in Reims. The fault of Arnaud Robinet, mayor of the city, biochemist by training, supporter of the legalization of cannabis and member of the political party Horizons, which we know is directed, from the port of Le Havre, by Edouard Philippe, a notorious drug addict of the series. This atmosphere breaking Bad explains, no doubt, the fresh installation in town of the detective film festival which has not, however, come out fully armed from the Reims thigh.
Created in 1982 by Lionel Chouchan, advertiser, writer and multiplier of film festivals like breads (Deauville, Avoriaz, Yukari, Manaus, etc.), the event initially threw its canvas at Cognac, in close communion with the National Bureau of Cognac Industries . Bruno Barde, who then took the reins of the flourishing cinematographic activities of the communication agency Le Public Système, landed there himself in 1995.
Flourishing diversity
After twenty-five years of collaboration between Le Public Système and the Bureau du cognac, however, the rag is burning around the question formulated by Bruno Barde as follows: “yaki? ». Classic disagreement between the requirement of profitability and stardom of a sponsor – whether private or public for that matter – and the artistic concern of a programmer. First exile for the festival, which landed in 2009 in Beaune, where the Covid-19 caught up with it in 2020, with a last-minute cancellation of the festival and a big quarrel with the town hall over the reimbursement of costs incurred, which is being dealt with today still in court today. Meanwhile, Bruno Barde is pleased to have been “welcomed with open arms” by the city of Reims which, after Cognac and Beaune, is not intended to lower the alcohol level of festival-goers.
A first edition – under pandemic embargo and remotely – therefore took place in 2021, made sparkling by the double and surprising Iranian presence of Tehran Law of Saeed Roustayi (Grand Prix) and of Black market by Abbas Amini (Jury Prize). Ironically, a bit dark for once, wants the second edition of the festival can not claim, in any case of films in competition, no similar feeling or discovery. The ten works in attendance will nevertheless have testified to the universal dynamism and plasticity of a genre that seems to resist much better than the western, even if it shares with it some fundamental attributes on questions of human nature, the omnipresence evil and the fatality of fate.
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