Last night, the 34th annual César Awards were handed out in Paris at the Theatre du Chatelet.  These are the French equivalent of the Oscars.  The major winner of the night was the film Séraphine, which took away seven awards including best film.  Yolande Moreau won best actress for her role in that film and Vincent Cassel won the best actor award for his role in Mesrine, despite a posthumous nomination in the same category for Guillaume Depardieu for his role in Versailles.  Laurent Cantet won for Best Screenplay Adaption for Entre les murs, the movie I told you about in a recent article which was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Film category.  Sean Penn’s Into the Wild was up for Best Foreign Film at the Césars, but it did not receive the award.  The winner in that category was Israel’s Waltz with Bashir about the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon war.

If you’re looking for a good French film to watch, besides those mentioned above, you might want to check out one of these since they were also the focus of the 2009 Césars:
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime
Paris
Le premier jour du reste de ta vie
Coluche, l’histoire d’un mec
2 jours à tuer
Un conte de Noël
La Fille de Monaco 

Here’s a link to an article in Le Monde about last night’s ceremony if you want to see a photo presentation and read about it in French:

“Séraphine” grande gagnante des Césars 2009
LEMONDE.FR | 28.02.09                  

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And here’s a link to several videos of the red carpet and interviews with the stars.