Hafsia Herzi’s ‘The Little Sister’ Picks Up France’s Louis Delluc Award

After profitable an award at Cannes the place it premiered in competitors, Hafsia Herzi‘s movie “The Little Sister” has formally kicked off the French awards season, taking the Louis Delluc prize from critics.

The ceremony was hosted today (Dec. 10) at the Fouquet’s restaurant on the Champs-Élysées. A second prize, called Prix Louis Delluc for first movie, went to Valentine Cadic for “Le rendez-vous de l’été,” which is ready against the backdrop of the Paris Olympic Games and opened this 12 months at the Berlinale.

“The Little Sister,” which marks the third feature movie helmed by Herzi, tells the coming-of-age story about a French-Algerian teenager exploring her sexuality while navigating her Muslim religion. The movie was tailored from the novel by Fatima Daas which was dropped at Herzi by Julie Billy who produced “The Little Sister” alongside Naomi Denamur by way of their banner June Films.

Nadia Melliti, who received best actress at Cannes, stars as 17-year-old Fatima, the youngest of three daughters, who grapples together with her rising attraction to women and her loyalty to her caring French-Algerian household. MK2 Films has bought it round the world, including in the U.S. the place it was acquired by Strand Releasing. In France, the place Ad Vitam is dealing with “The Little Sister,” the film has struck a chord, promoting more than 400K admissions — a healthy performance in a tough theatrical market.

Speaking to Variety proper after the ceremony, Herzi said receiving the Louis Delluc Prize was a “great source of great pride.”

“I know that these are people who are knowledgeable, who see a lot of films, who are not easily influenced. It’s a very tough jury,” said Herzi, who’s also a well-liked actress who picked up this 12 months’s Cesar Award for her function in “Borgo.”

“In my career as a director,” Herzi said, “the support of the press has been very important, considering the subjects I’m tackling in my films, including in the latest one.”

When Herzi set off to adapt Fatima Daas’ ebook, she said she “immediately knew it was going to be complicated.” She was also warned. “I was told clearly: Homosexuality, religion, forget it.”

But she boldly pursued the project. “I really wanted to take on the challenge and I believed strongly in the character and the story,” she said, before revealing that the manufacturing needed to pause and relocate at some point. “During filming, we got into trouble, some people threw stones at part of the crew because they didn’t want a lesbian film, so we had to stop for everyone’s safety,” Herzi said. Once the movie was launched, she said she also “received quite a few threats and insults.” But while she acknowledged the fact that making the movie was “complicated” attributable to the backlash she needed to overcome, she also felt that “received a lot more kindness all around” by way of the journey.

Billy, who found Fatima Daas’s ebook and considered Herzi to carry it to the big display screen, told Variety that when she first read the novel she “felt it was unadaptable and at the same time, a masterpiece of emotions, led by a character who is truly missing in literature, but also in cinema.”

Having seen Herzi’s debut feature “Tu merites un amour” (“You Deserve a Lover”), Billy felt that Herzi might make it her personal if she tailored “The Little Sister.” “In Hafsia’s films, there is life, there is freedom, there is a liveliness in her mise-en-scene that was very similar to the liveliness in Fatima’s language, and I wanted these two to come together.”

In adapting the novel, Herzi “achieved something quite crazy,” Billy said, “because the book is very fragmented, covering many stages of the character’s life, and she made some very strong choices.”

The Louis-Delluc jury is presided by former Cannes president Gilles Jacob, and includes Sophie Avon Alex Vicente, Ariane Allard, Ava Cahen, Charlotte Lipinska, Élisabeth Franck-Dumas, Jean-Marc Lalanne, Jean-Michel Frodon, Gérard Lefort, Mathieu Macheret, Pierre Murat and Sophie Grassin.