The 2022 edition of the Angoulême comic book festival awarded its Fauve d’Or for the best album of the past year to Listen, pretty Marcia, by the Brazilian Marcello Quintanilha, a semi-comic, semi-tragic dive into the daily violence of the Brazilian favelas. A singular work, tasty and graphically striking.
The comic strip author Marcello Quintanilha specializes in the chronicles of the daily life of his country, mixing tragedy and comedy, carried by colorful characters. His graphic style has so far assumed a frank sobriety, often in black and white, with a dynamic line that particularly highlights faces and bodies, in environments bordering on the abstract (Talc the distant) or more realistic but not very present (Tungsten).
Listen, pretty Marciaa dive into the daily violence of Brazil, seduces the jury of Angoulême
His last opus, Listen, pretty Marcia (Here and there), was particularly marked by a graphic break. By using flat tints of digital colors, sometimes unrealistic, he reinforces both the abstract aspect of the images, their garish and emotional side, the readability of the whole, and this tragic-comic mixture which makes the mark of its author. .
This new take perfectly showcases a narrative that follows Marcia, a nurse in Rio de Janeiro. She is confronted by a gang with which her daughter hangs out, sassy and sunny. The whole offers a dive into the daily violence of Brazil, into the daily life of the favelas and into this resistance to contingencies, made up of biting irony, assumed burlesque, and constant combativeness.
This story in the form of a punch seduced the jury of the 2022 edition of the Angoulême Comic Strip Festival. Led by the illustrator, author and musician Fanny Michaëlis, this jury awarded its Fauve d’Or, rewarding the best album of the past year, to Listen, pretty Marcia.
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