By Alistair Dabbs
The fiftieth model of the Angoulême Competitors Worldwide de Bande-Desinée (FIBD) acquired the social gathering started closing night by deciding on thought-about certainly one of France’s private, Raid Sattouf, as winner of its excessive accolade for 2023.
As unusual, the Grand Prix was awarded all through the event’s opening ceremony, held the evening sooner than the four-day pageant opens to the general public. As a lot as 200,000 comic followers are anticipated to descend – and ascend – upon the hilly pageant metropolis 75 miles north-east of Bordeaux’s wine space between 26 and 29 January.
“To return after Druillet, Moebius, Bilal was too abstract and inconceivable” Riad Sattouf declared in an e-mail dashed off to French newspaper Le Monde after the top consequence was launched closing night.
However the 44-year-old author-artist and film-maker was hardly an outsider for this yr’s Grand Prix, nor a stranger to the Angoulême awards podium. Exactly 20 years up to now he obtained the pageant’s René Goscinny Award for youthful authors, and Amount 3 of his satirical sequence Pascal Brutal was chosen as Most interesting Album in 2010. In 2015, he obtained the ‘Fauve d’or’ for Most interesting Album as soon as extra, for his first amount of The Arab of the Future (printed inside the US by Pantheon.)
He was even caught up inside the awards controversy all through the notorious Angoulême pageant in 2016, having been included in an fully male shortlist. Sattouf publicly insisted that he far from that yr’s itemizing to allow nominations for women comics creators. The creative path of FIBD modified dramatically inside the years that adopted.
Sattouf’s most worthwhile sequence, The Arab of the Future, has purchased higher than 3 million copies and has been translated into higher than 20 languages. It is largely autobiographical, whereas moreover an unlikely comedy, recounting what it was want to develop up with a significantly boorish Syrian father and 100% French mother, and being shuttled between nations and cultures.
Amount 6 of the sequence was France’s best-selling comics title of 2022 and is up for FIBD’s Most interesting Album award however as soon as extra this yr. The winners of the entire awards lessons – Les fauves (‘the wild ones’)– might be launched on Saturday night.
Volumes 1 to 4 of The Arab of the Future and the first amount of his trendy sequence for women, Esther’s Notebooks – the first amount merely received right here out inside the US – might be present in English.
Along with his early work printed in French satirical magazines akin to Fluide Glacial and Charlie Hebdo, Sattouf might be recognized in his native France for his modest side-career as a movie writer and director. In 2004, he began drawing a cartoon sequence for Charlie generally known as The Secret Lifetime of Youth throughout which he depicted conversations overheard whereas on public transport in Paris. Just a few of those had been tailor-made proper right into a 2009 movie generally known as Les Beaux Gosses (English title: The French Kissers), which obtained him a César Award the following yr for Most interesting New Director.
In claiming the Grand Prix at Angoulême, Sattouf succeeds 2022’s winner, Quebec’s Julie Doucet, and means he might be honoured with a critical exhibition at subsequent yr’s event.
copyright © 2023 Alistair Dabbs