We’ve rarely heard so much about taking part in a comic book event. This Thursday, November 16, the big press conference of the 51st Angoulême International Comics Festival (FIBD) took place and for this occasion the press was invited to Saint-Denis to the brand new premises of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (Cojo), on the first floor of a building called “Pulse”, whose stairs invite you to beat speed records (they tell you how many seconds separate you from each upper floor on average). In this extremely dynamic environment we discover the three festival posters, signed by Riad Sattouf, Hiroaki Samura and Nine Antico, the latter taking a winking look into the past with his group of young comic readers with Afro cuts or hairy legs in the edition that follows the Affair about the man whose name we should not speak was shaken by feminist demands and calls for more inclusivity.
Olympic values
After a video teaser to a muscular beat that is more reminiscent of superhero fights than the delicate art of the graphic novel, and where there are magnificent images of Riad Sattouf performing his Fauve d’Honneur, Druillet, Breakdance (?) and Juliette Armanet (??) swings what we assume is intended to represent the fusion of the arts, the general delegate of the festival, Franck Bondoux, welcomes the gathering with big thanks to the “Cojo” – we will hear it a good fifty times – and a good third The conference is dedicated to the idea of a Cultural Olympiad, the first major event of which will be the FIBD.
So we will see one by one Thierry Rey, Olympic champion in judo and special advisor to Paris 2024 (“very impressed to stand in front of all these cultural journalists while all we care about is sports”) and Dominique Hervieu, Cojo’s cultural director, who praised the connection between art and Olympic values (“Excellence and surpassing yourself”) but also highlight “Five symbolic festivals” whose programming will be done in collaboration with the Olympic Games: Angoulême, the “will open the ball”, followed by Cannes, Arles, Avignon and Rock en Seine. Specifically, the FIBD “worked with our Moselle friends,” specifies Bondoux by organizing an exhibition on running at the Château de Malbrouck, which will take place there until October 2024 (“Running is incredible” exclaims the general delegate of the festival). “Community of Moselle Runners” was even included in the tireless JR’s “Inside Out” project. The Angoulême Museum also presents the exhibition “Art of Running”, which presents unpublished works by Lorenzo Mattotti on the subject with texts by Maria Pourchet.
Saber orgy
Other special features of this 51st edition: Canada will benefit from a place of choice this year and the Manga district continues to evolve, with the key word “immersion” highlighted by the artistic co-director Fausto Fasulo and taken up by his colleague Marguerite Demoëte, reappointed this year following the departure of Sonia Déchamps. The FIBD is still active on the exhibition side“kiss and the scope of the manga» To use Fasulo’s terms – we will therefore see two Japanese artists on display: Moto Hagio, avant-garde author of the genre, now in her seventies and exhibited outside Japan for the very first time, and a sword orgy by Hiroaki Samura in the Franquin Room, but also a immersive space dedicated to the universe of the series #DRCL Midnight Children and the presence of the director Rintarô (who was already recently invited to a master class at the Lumière de Lyon festival) around his autobiography My life in 24 frames per second. Finally, Nine Antico will benefit from a major retrospective at the Hôtel Saint-Simon (where the Julie Doucet exhibition was held last year), and Riad Sattouf, Grand Prix in 2023, will take over the Moebius ship (part of it will also be dedicated) . Screenwriter Thierry Smolderen). the Arab of the future. Note that Julie Doucet, who won exactly the same prize as Riad Sattouf, did not benefit from the honors of the same building.
We also learned that Julie Birmant won the Goscinny Prize for Best Screenplay this year for the exciting first volume of dali, drawn by Clément Oubrerie – which we will talk about in more detail on our picture pages this weekend. Overall, there will have been no direct allusion to the questions raised at the 50th edition, except perhaps at the very end, at the end of a sentence from Franck Bondoux, which reiterates the importance attached to the Outfit meetings and forums: “whereas the festival must remain a space for debate and not abuse.” The proportion of women in the official selection remains roughly the same: a little less than a third of all albums.
The entire official selection
Acting lessons by Nick Drnaso (Almost Moon).
Astra Nova by Lisa Blumen (the collaborator of the self).
Blood of the Virgin by Sammy Harkham (Cornelius).
Blue Giant Explorer Volume 1 by Shinichi Ishizuka (Glénat).
The bow by Vincent Vanoli (Oui’Dire).
Chainsaw Man Volume 13 by Tatsuki Fujimoto (Crunchyroll).
Cannon fodder d’Aroha Travé (FLBLB).
Lead Matthias Lehmann (casterman).
Heaven in your head by Antonio Altarriba, Sergio García Sánchez and Lola Moral (Denoël).
dig by Delphine Panique (Cornelius).
The Daronnes de Yeong-Shin Ma (Atrabile).
Labyrinths Volume 3 by Charles Burns (Cornelius).
The Last Sergeant Volume 1 by Fabrice Neaud (Delcourt).
Bad things to say by Beatriz Lema Rivera (Sarbacane).
Stupid stupid de Lukasz Wojciechowski (Çà et là).
On the way by Peggy Adam (Atrabile).
And the island went up in flames by John Vasquez Mejias (Ici-bas).
Evol Volume 1 d’Atsushi Kaneko (Delcourt).
The fable volume 13 de Katsuhisa Minami (Pika).
milk flower by Miguel Vila (Presque Lune).
goiter by Josh Pettinger (Right here).
Hanbok volume 1 by Sophie Darcq (The Apocalypse).
The embarrassed man by Matthieu Chiara (citrus fruit).
The Grand Illusion Volume 1 d’Alessandro Tota (Gallimard BD).
The Undrinkables by Julia Wertz (Citrus).
Twin volume 1 by Florence Dupré la Tour (Dargaud).
Kujô l’Implacable take 3 de Shohei Manabe (Kana).
Madonnas and whores from Nine Antico (Dupuis/Aire Libre).
Mary pain by Lola Lorente (Actes Sud BD).
Monica by Daniel Clowes (Delcourt).
The Necromancer by Matthias Aregui (2024).
The beautiful house by the lake Volume 2 by James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez Bueno (Urban Comics).
Ocean Express by François Ayroles (The Association).
Paper birds by Maya Neyestani (À et là).
A few minutes later time stops de Double Bob (Frmk).
Saga Volume 11 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Urban Comics).
Saint Elmo Volume 4 by Serge Lehman and Frederik Peeters (Delcourt).
Sibyl by Max Baitinger (The employee of mine).
Big praise for that 2 by Pierre-Henry Gomont (Dargaud).
Total suicide by Julie Doucet (The Association).
A nice life de Hideyasu Moto (Misma).
An oriental education de Charles Berberian (Casterman).
A childhood made of straw de Lika Nüssli (Atrabile).
The true story of Saint Nicholas the Thierry Van Hasselt (Frmk).
Pavil’s face by Jérémy Perrodeau (2024).
