While he has just put an end to his great work, “the Arab of the future”, Riad Sattouf received this Wednesday, January 25 the supreme distinction in French comics: the Grand Prix d’Angoulême. Preferred by his peers to Alison Bechdel and Catherine Meurisse, the author of “Pascal Brutal” and “Young Actor” thus sees all of his work recognized. He succeeds Quebecer Julie Doucet and will be the subject of a major retrospective at the next edition of the Festival, in 2024.
“The Arab of the future”, continuation and end: the law of the strongest always prevails
His profile is faultless: a cartoonist with huge critical and commercial success, who enjoys international renown, recipient of a César (for best first film, for “Les Beaux Gosses”, in 2010), who masters the humor like the tragic, which is illustrated in the one-page gag as in the intimate graphic novel, which scans like an anthropologist the manias and tics of language of his contemporaries… His coronation is happy news, and not just because he draws “les Cahiers d’Esther” every week in “l’Obs”. Sattouf, the Arab of the grand prize.
However, this reward carries with it a slight bitterness. The well-deserved victory of Sattouf is indeed tarnished by the delicate situation that the Angoulême Festival is currently going through. Reminder of the facts: in November 2022, the organizers announced a carte blanche to Bastien Vivès. Almost immediate outcry on social networks, where some of his works are accused of trivializing incest and child pornography. Two child protection associations took up the case and ended up prosecuting the author and his publishers. Cornered, Angoulême cancels the exhibition due to ” threat “. However, among the detractors of Vivès, many wondered above all about the fact that the Festival, dragging a few pans on the subject of sexism, chose to put forward an author with a limited imagination and an androcentric vision of human relations. -women.
From the controversy to the investigation for the dissemination of child pornography images: what is Bastien Vivès the name of?
The best response to this major controversy would have been to elect at the grand prize… a woman. Many believed it. It was Catherine Meurisse’s moment. A former “Charlie Hebdo” elected to the Academy of Fine Arts, which reconciles all audiences, from the most popular to the intelligentsia. It was the Alison Bechdel moment. A queer icon, designer of autobiographical masterpieces to which she has just added a new stone, “the Secret of superhuman strength” (Denoël Graphic), the first comic strip to be nominated for the Prix Médicis Etranger. But it was also the Riad Sattouf moment.
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Moreover, the Festival can do nothing about it: since 2014, it is the authors who, by a vote on the internet, choose the winner. “for all of his work and his imprint on the history of comics”. Some will certainly see it as a missed opportunity for the world of comics. Even an unpleasant impression of a “backlash” after the election of Julie Doucet in 2022, an indie designer and feminist rather confidential and rarely exposed. The opposite of Sattouf, a well-known author, with a retrospective at the BPI Center Pompidou in 2018, two Fauve d’or (for the first volume of “The Arab of the Future” and the third of “Pascal Brutal”) and whose final volume of “the Arab of the future” is once again in official competition. He also designed a poster for the Festival this year. He will have to repeat next year.
“I’m going to make love to you all”
Born in 1978 to a Syrian father and a Breton mother, Riad Sattouf spent his childhood between Libya, Syria and Côtes-d’Armor. He studied applied arts in Nantes, then animated film at the Ecole des Gobelins in Paris. Quickly spotted, he launched into comics in 2000 with “Petit Verglas”, on a screenplay by Eric Corbeyran, in a relatively classic style, contrary to the one that would make him successful. These are the rough years. Sattouf proposes projects that publishers reject outright, spends long periods at festivals without any reader asking him for a signature, struggles to pay the rent for his tiny concierge’s lodge. “I was wondering if I shouldn’t go back to Rennes, to my mother’s house”, he confided in the world “ in 2022.
Riad Sattouf: “I felt hyperresponsible for Vincent Lacoste”
Fortunately, Riad Sattouf met his idol and mentor, Emile Bravo, future author of the excellent saga “Spirou, hope despite everything”. This put him in contact with Joann Sfar, and soon, with Mathieu Sapin and Christophe Blain, they will share a studio rue d’Avron, in the 20e capital district. The association of these future heavyweights of the comic strip uninhibits Sattouf, who begins to assume his strong point: humor. He publishes “The Poor Adventures of Jérémie” (Dargaud, 2003), the daily life of a loser, a trait common to many of his characters. Then Sfar signs it in the collection that he launches and directs at Bréal Jeunesse: first “Manuel du puceau” (2003). Then “My Circumcision” (2004), which caused a scandal and has become untraceable since the author bought the rights and the copies.
“Return to college” (Hachette, 2005) is the result of a two-week immersion in a class in a college in the beautiful districts of Paris. Sattouf polishes his acumen in grasping the vocabulary and behavior of young people, magnifying the line to make them hilarious and slightly strange. A faculty that he will continue in “The Secret Life of Young People”, for “Charlie Hebdo”. And much later in “les Cahiers d’Esther”, for “l’Obs”, where he has been inspired every week, since 2014, by the stories of a friend’s daughter, aged 10 to 17. In the meantime, he also imagined the character of Pascal Brutal, a hypervirilist figure who regularly threatens his world: “I’m going to make love to you all. »
“A comic for those who don’t usually read it”
Riad Sattouf has also distinguished himself in the cinema. “Les Beaux Gosses”, an irresistible chronicle of adolescent emotions that launched Vincent Lacoste’s career, received the César for best first film in 2010. More mixed success for his second feature film, the more experimental “Jacky in the kingdom of girls” ( 2014), namely Didier Bourdon in an abaya and in full dictatorial gynocracy. Sattouf resents this failure. “I thought my life was ruined”, he says. Basically, he is looking for a bias to evoke his childhood in Syria and his relationship with his father.
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It will be “the Arab of the future”, portrait of Abdel-Razak Sattouf, this frustrated academic who believes in the pan-Arab, socialist and secular ideal that his son, a blond kid, must embody. “sublimely beautiful”. Until this man turns out to be misogynistic, racist, anti-Semitic, far right and locks himself in an increasingly radical Islam. Then commit an unforgivable act. From the first volume, released in 2014 by Allary, this comic strip, which aims to “to reach readers who do not usually read them”, is wildly successful. Now translated into 23 languages (still not in Arabic), the series has sold more than 3 million copies. With the sixth and last volume published at the end of 2022, Riad Sattouf has definitively killed the father, and given the key to his psyche and his work.
Angoulême 2023: all about the International Comics Festival
Riad Sattouf is established in Saint-Malo. He is currently working on a feature film with Les Inconnus: nothing surprising for someone who worships Didier Bourdon. “I’ve always loved him. It’s one of the biggest. It has a unique evocative force. […] I can no longer watch someone who plays a role without thinking that Didier Bourdon would be better and much more interesting than him in this role.he told the magazine “Society” in 2018. This control freak notorious has distanced itself from Allary, where he had demanded to be the only comic book author in the catalog, to create his own publishing house, the Books of the Future, and its variation, the Impressions of the Future, which offer their lot of fun goodies. Draftsman, screenwriter, filmmaker, businessman: Sattouf, the artist of the future.
Last album released: the Arab of the futurevolume 6, by Riad Sattouf, Allary Editions, 184 p., 24.90 euros.
Angoulême International Comics Festival. From January 26 to 29. bdangouleme.com
