Pessac Historical Film Festival: “Secrets and lies” presented in 2025

UVibrant joy fueled the lobby of the Jean-Eustache cinema in Pessac this Sunday, to close 34^e history film festival. A very rich edition, whose main theme (Spain – Portugal) brought together Spanish and Portuguese cultures, history and cinema. At the end of a long awards ceremony, the festival revealed the theme of the 2025 edition: “Secret and lies”.

“This provides an opportunity to deal with two very different issues. In particular, today essential, of rising fake news undermining all traditional media,” explained its director François Aymé behind the scenes. “The global development of disinfection affects government strategies or the conquest of power. Since it is heavily involved in training high school and university students, the festival must make young audiences aware of this movement in the relationship with the truth, and the questioning of information.

“As for the question of secrecy, it is closely linked to the exercise of power: rules and obligations of transparency, concealment… We saw it with the cases of Dreyfus, Watergate, Clearstream… Secrecy has inspired several works of cinema. And the corpus of films dealing with espionage is abundant. »

Maria de Medeiros honoree

Twelve years after chairing the fiction competition jury, actress Maria de Medeiros (“To our children”, Pulp Fiction”) this year joined the student jury for the Danielle Le Roy award. The board of directors of the festival gave him the “Coup de coeur” for his film “Capitaine d’Avril”. In addition, the Pope Clément award went to the Portuguese producer Paulo Branco (“The mystery of Lisbon”, by Raoul Ruiz, “No or the vain glory of command” by Manuel de Oliveira), who was visibly moved.

Two fictions were awarded: the Iranian film “In the Land of Our Brothers” by Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi (professional jury prize), and “I’m still here” by the Brazilian Walter Salles (student jury prize and audience).

Idem, in the category of new documentaries, two awards (high school students and public) recognized the same film: “Poland: women, the Pope and the Party” by Ada Grudzinski, dedicated to the laws on prohibition -born in Poland. The professional jury chose the very radical and moving “Multiplication” by the Ukrainian Igor Minaev, and the town of Pessac “François Mauriac, intimate memories” by Virginie Linhart.

“Under the umbrellas, the garbage”

At the end of the ceremony, representatives of the assembly read “Under the screens, la dèche”, which brings together the professionals behind the scenes that enable 150 film festivals to take place in France, read a message and ‘ they asked to be integrated in. the regime.

When the time comes to take stock, Pessac has a smile: by reaching around 25,000 pupils, the Pessac history film festival has broken the record number of attendances among young people. Half of his sessions were sold out. And the Pessac meeting, faced – like most events of this type – with a decline in funding, was able to solve an economic equation more difficult than before. He is now looking to the future.