Competition

Winner
Venezia Classici Award
Venice Film Festival
I teach film, and this movie gave me some bracing lessons
-- Glenn Kenny, New York Times

NO LONGER PLAYING

The Competition

The Competition begins, significantly, with the image of a locked gate—that of La Fémis, one of the most prestigious film schools in the world, offering hands-on training from working professionals and accepting only forty students per year from thousands of applicants. This Wiseman-esque documentary from Simon, one of France’s premiere nonfiction filmmakers, observes the process whereby those lucky forty are selected—a process which is revealed to be highly personal, idiosyncratic, and subject to the vagaries of taste and personal prejudice. Funny, penetrating, and surprisingly suspenseful, The Competition offers not only a unique opportunity to see the inner workings of an institution at the very heart of the French film industry, but an invitation to look at the assumptions and roadblocks that shape any national film industry, and higher education in general.
Not Rated
Genre
Documentary, Films & Filmmakers, Women and Film, French Cinema
Runtime
121
Language
French
Director
Claire Simon
Awards:
Winner, Venezia Classici Award, Venice Film Festival
FEATURED REVIEW
Ryan SwenThe Film Stage

In the age-old divide (perhaps most evident in the United States) between film production and criticism, crossed by certain pioneers yet often left unbridged, it can sometimes be forgotten just how much the former is a process: not only in the actual procedure of filmmaking but also in everything ...

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The Competition Get Tickets

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