The 5th edition almost did not take place. And yet, the FIFP, launched yesterday, is still upmarket, and is already beating its records for ticket sales and festival-goer passes.
Henzo Lefèvre and Etienne Garcia fought for 12 months to achieve this 5th edition, whose opening ceremony on Thursday evening was impeccable, and whose first figures suggest the best: “The 4th edition, in a still complicated health context, had already posted an attendance rate up 36%, but the risk of losing 60% of the festival’s budget has meant that the last 12 months have been tough. Tonight, 650 people are attending the opening ceremony, we have already exceeded the number of sales of festival passes and tickets for 2022. We have seen, for internet reservations, that you come from 23 departments”, announced Henzo Lefèvre to thank the loyalty of the public.
Programming, qualified “ambitious and powerful” by Henzo Lefèvre mobilizes a team of over one hundred volunteers. The City came to the rescue of the festival (as “co-director”), but also the Agglo, the Department, the Region, several private patrons. A part of the public, the club of FIFP ambassadors, even brought its share of sponsorship to allow this edition. “An enthusiasm that demonstrates the relevance of creating a film festival around this theme for 5 days in Carcassonne”.
A festival with film crews, debates, meetings
The festival started in the afternoon with in particular the screening of Novembre, by Cédric Jimenez, who was going to receive a prize for his young career at the end of the day. The feature film screened Thursday evening at the Dôme, Houria, by Mounia Meddour, will be the subject of Friday morning shortly before 9 a.m. at the Salon du festival, and around a breakfast, a casual discussion with the public morning in the presence of part of the film crew.
At least two cinematographic highlights will frame this edition: the “surprise” session (indicated as such on the program) which is the film Temps Mort by Eve Duchemin, in preview (its release is scheduled for May 3), screened Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Colosseum. And the closing film, All the Beauty and the Spilled Blood (about the life of photographer Nan Goldin), Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival last September. But the beauty of such a festival is to confront stories from 19 countries on 5 continents which all say something about our society and which are therefore eminently political. Festival-goers have the choice between 37 films, including 34 previews.
“Hello? Gilles Lellouche? This is Carcassonne”
The organizers insisted on inviting the director Cédric Jimenez to Carcassonne to give him an honorary prize for directing, and to support their discourse on cinema, “political” cinema. “You embody the new generation of filmmakers at a time when we say the cinema is finished, that only entertainment can still fill the rooms, and you demonstrate that we can make films that shake things up, make us feel things as as a citizen”. Cédric Jimenez’s latest feature film, Novembre, on the theme of the Paris attacks, was in 2022 the 2nd best French film in terms of cinema attendance. “Touched to see how cinema is shared”, Cédric Jimenez took his cell phone out of his pocket to call his “friend” Gilles Lellouche, who had let it be known that he wanted to speak during the evening at the Dôme. The actor therefore paid a vibrant tribute to the director who employed him on several occasions, in La French, Bac Nord, HHhH, on the phone of Cédric Jimenez plugged into the microphone in the room: “Cédric, he has changed my life as an actor and the French cinematographic landscape a little. I am happy for him, and I hope that this award will be the first in a long series”.