SYLVIE TESTUD awarded Best European Actress 2010This Saturday, Sylvie Testud won the Best European Actress Award 2010 for her role in LOURDES by Austrian director Jessica Hausner (LOVELY RITA, HOTEL) at the 23rd European Film Academy Ceremony in Tallinn, Estonia. Founded in 1989 by Ingmar Bergman and 40 other filmmakers, the European Film Academy (EFA) now unites more than 2,300 European film professionals who elect every year the best European films, actors, or crewmembers in a total of 17 categories. Sylvie Testud, who started her career in Germany and widely played outside the French borders, follows Kate Winslet for THE READER and Kristin Scott-Thomas for I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (IL Y A LONGTEMPS QUE JE T’AIME). In LOURDES, Sylvie Testud remarkably plays the role of Christine, a woman who has been confined to a wheelchair for most of her life. In order to escape her isolation, she makes a journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains. She wakes up one morning seemingly cured by a miracle. The leader of the pilgrimage group, a handsome 40-year-old volunteer from the Order of Malta, begins to take an interest in her. She tries to hold on to this newfound chance for happiness, while her cure provokes envy and admiration. Sylvie Testud, expecting her second child, could not attend the ceremony in person but declared in a message of thanks that the EFA have a very special importance to her who started outside France and who will continue to make films reassembling cinema lovers. She thanked most particularly Jessica Hausner, her partners Bruno Todeschini and Lea Seydoux, and Philippe Bober who she said gives a perfect image of what today’s European Cinema represents. LOURDES has been successfully released theatrically throughout Europe, was invited in some of the most important film festivals after its premiere in Venice (Toronto, Pusan, London, Karlovy Vary, Seville, Rotterdam) and won a large number of festival awards including the FIPRESCI prize in Venice, the Gold Giraldillo for best film at the Seville Film Festival, the Grand Prix in Warsaw, and the Golden Camera 300 award at the Camera Film Festival Manaki Brothers in Macedonia. Jessica Hausner’s film has been produced by Martin Gschlacht (Coop99), Susanne Marian (Essential Filmproduktion) and Philippe Bober (Parisienne de Production), supported by Österreichisches Filminstitut, Filmfonds Wien, Eurimages Council of Europe, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Région Midi-Pyrénées, Land Niederösterreich in collaboration with ZDF/Arte, Arte France Cinema, ORF (Film/Fernseh-Abkomen) and TPS. |
