For its 50th anniversary, the Angoulême International Comic Strip Festival, which opens to the public Thursday, January 25, put the small dishes in the big. In addition to the prestigious awards, which will reward the best of international comic strip production, visitors – more than 200,000 last year – will be able to see what makes this festival unique: his headliners, led by Riad Sattouf, who, he said, “ the heavy responsibility » to preside over the Grand Prix, but also the exhibitions, discoveries, signatures and selections, which reserve a large part for public participation. Not to mention, of course, the manga space… In total, an event that stands out more than ever as a real hub in the world of comics.
Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture, visited the festival on Saturday 7 February, where she met with authors, publishers and professionals. “ An exciting day, the Minister said: meetings with inventors of forms, talented authors, publishers and readers without whom the 9th art would not be one of the cultural and popular forces of France ".
All about the festival’s 50th anniversary
On January 25, 1974, a handful of enthusiasts launched the first comic strip festival in Angoulême. With one ambition: to show, with the support of great signatures of the time, the Brétécher, Franquin or Gotlib, the richness and diversity of comics, too often reduced to entertainment for youth. Fifty years later, it is hardly safe to say that these precursors have won their bet: the 9th Art is now a heavyweight of the French edition, with 75 million copies sold in 2023, according to the GfK institute. A trend that confirms the dynamism of the sector.
In addition to its never-denied popular success, comics are now recognized as a literary genre in its own right, as evidenced by an event in XXL format designed by the Ministry of Culture, 2020, the Year of Comics, but also the entry of comics at the Collège de France, the designation ofAngoulême as Unesco’s «creative city» or the choice of the Institut de France to commemorate in 2024 the first edition of the festival as a milestone of French culture. Without forgetting the unparalleled dynamism of the International City of Comics and Images, in Angoulême.
Sport, body and movement
As Paris 2024 looms, the comic strip festival could not fail to celebrate the body, sport and movement. On the exhibition side, the presentation at the Angoulême museum from January 25 to March 10 of “The Art of Running. Catching the Race” by the brilliant Italian cartoonist Lorenzo Mattotti. Accompanied by incandescent fictions by Maria Pourchet, the exhibition, labeled Cultural Olympiad, explores, in a hundred drawings, the immemorial gesture of the runner, who, since the dawn of time, paces the earth, from the humus of forests to the bitumen of major cities. Splendid. Also noteworthy is «La ligne de départ», an unprecedented exhibition presented from 25 to 28 at Espace Nouvelle Création, which brings together an unprecedented performance by four young talents: Nina Lechartier, Jérémy Perrodeau, Chloé Wary and Lisa Blumen: each will have to create its own starting line in a «sports race, taken at the heart of a narrative and free formats». To see.
On the publishing side, many albums deal with the theme of sport, including The wrinkle by Simon Boileau and Florent Pierre, René Goscinny Award for best young screenwriter at the Angoulême comic strip festival. This album tells a beautiful escape by bike from two friends across France.
Partager la page