France’s Cesar Awards Expands Nominations

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PARIS - This year’s crop of French filmmakers and talent will swim in a bigger pool at the 37th annual Cesar Awards in February with France’s film academy to expand its Best Director, Actor and Actress categories to seven instead of the traditional five nominations.

The board of the Academy of Film Technical Arts and Sciences announced the decision after meeting on Monday in Paris.

The Academy has already expanded the Best Film and Best Foreign film competition to seven titles instead of the traditional five and now other categories are following suite.

This year’s Cesar awards competition will be fierce after a stellar year at the French box office and several titles earning both critical and public acclaim across the board including France’s bid for an Oscar, Valerie Donzelli’s Declaration of war, recent box office record breaker Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s Untouchable, U.S. awards season darling Michael Hazanivicius’ The Artist and Maiwenn’s Festival de Cannes hit Poliss.

The nominees for this year’s Cesar awards will be announced on Jan. 27. Gallic awards season officially kicked off on Friday when Aki Kurismaki’s Le Havre won the Louis Delluc Prize.

The 37th annual Cesar Awards will be broadcast live and unencrypted from Paris’ Chatelet Theater on Friday, Feb. 24 on Gallic pay TV network Canal Plus.