Winners of the 2026 Angoulême festival: The triumph of Gustave Kervern

That’s it, his first solo feature film for the big screen, wins the Valois de Diamant awarded by Franck Dubosc’s jury

The years follow one another and are not alike in the Angoumois competition. In 2025, The children are fine by Nathan Ambrosioni immediately established himself as the big favorite for the final prize list and logically left with the Valois de Diamant for best film. This year, it would be very smart to say that they had anticipated the verdict before this evening, as the selection concocted by Dominique Besnehard, Marie-France Brière and Marie Carrot was of an excellent level, very compact and rich in different genres.

With a ceremony opened by a beautiful tribute from Marine Delplace to Dolly Parton with her interpretation of her legendary Jolenethe verdict therefore fell this evening. And the jury chaired by Franck Dubosc (author once again of a great hilarious number on stage) therefore chose to dedicate That’s it, it’s over (in theaters March 24), Gustave Kervern’s first solo feature film for the big screen. A poetic-political nugget whose sensitivity and beauty of staging have indeed made it one of the highlights of this edition. Kervern imagined here a love story in his native Mauritius between a young girl on vacation in a hotel (Suzanne Lindon) and a Mauritian who works there. And he tells, behind this relationship and the framework in which it takes place, how a freewheeling globalized capitalism finds a deadly echo in a Mauritian society that has been compartmentalized and therefore unequal for ages. After the Jean-Vigo Prize, this Valois de Diamant testifies to the turning point represented by this film in Kervern’s career.

But the prize list also celebrated three other films twice. Three other first feature films. The very autobiographical The Strike by Julien Gaspar-Oliveri, who speaks of incest with rare finesse and power, leaves with the prize for directing and the Valois for best actor awarded to Diego Murgia. And this for his first major role. We can discover it in theaters from Wednesday.

The Daughters of Abraham (to be seen from December 31) was awarded the Audience Award and a special mention for its three formidable main female performers, Melissa Guers, Ava Baya and Gabrielle Cohen. Once again a deserved double for this film in which, through a story of friendship between two young women – one Jewish, the other Muslim – struck by the broadcast of an intimate video, Hanaël El Yousfi goes against the current dominant discourse by affirming that what brings these two communities together is stronger than what separates them.

Finally, the last double, the Valois from the jury of French-speaking students and the best screenplay came to salute Which leads us to you by Khalil Cherti, rstory of the complex and twists and turns of the PMA journey of a couple who are unable to have children. Here too, a film capable of transcending its subject and carried by two performers whose complicity carries everything, Nina Meurisse and Sofian Khammes. It is scheduled for release on November 11.

To complete the list, If you think well (in theaters September 16), another couple story but where the passion of the first days quickly gives way to a relationship of influence, was also awarded the Valois for best actress awarded to Monia Chokri, inseparable on screen from Niels Schneider. Two immense compositions worthy of Géraldine Nakache’s work as author and director for a film that grabs you by the throat from the start and won’t let go.

And then, last but not least, Congo boy by Rafiki Fariala (to be seen from November 25). The story of a young Congolese refugee in the Central African Republic dreaming of a career in music in a country ravaged by civil war received the Valois de la musique award. A deserved reward even if we would have happily imagined it a little higher in a list where we can regret the absence of another highlight of the festival, the Ben’Imana by Marie-Clémentine Dusabejembo. An exploration, through a mother-daughter relationship, of a Rwanda facing the still vivid memory of the genocide of the Tutsis in 1994. Caméra d’Or in Cannes, he leaves here empty-handed. No one is perfect!