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| Brady Jandreau plays himself in Chloe Zhao’s The Rider - winner of the Grand Prix Award at the 43rd Festival of American Cinema in Deauville
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The Rider deals with a young cowboy Brady whose promising future as a top rodeo rider is suddenly jeopardised by a dreadful head injury. The clan are played by real-life family members Brady, Tim and Lilly Jandreau. Zhao met Brady before his real-life accident and developed the story out of the aftermath.
The jury, headed by The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius whose Redoubtable (the true story of how 17-year-old Anne Wiazemsky was wooed by and later married director Godard during the making of La Chinoise in 1967) has just opened in French cinemas, also awarded a shared jury prize. The recipients were David Lowery's A Ghost Story in which Casey Affleck stars opposite Rooney Mara and Joshua Z Weinstein’s Menashe (being released as Brooklyn Yiddish in France), a gentle, melancholy father-and-son story set among haredi communities in Brooklyn's Borough Park and Crown Heights neighbourhoods. Hazanavicius praised Weinstein for his " “humanity and poetry."
A Ghost Story also received the Critics’ Prize and an honour from the Revelation Jury.
The Audience Award was bestowed on Marc Webb’s Mary which features Chris Evans as a single man raising his child prodigy niece and who is drawn into a custody battle with his mother.
As part of the closing ceremony tribute was paid to Woody Harrelson, who received an honorary award.
