France names first Oscars liaison to support Minotaur campaign
France has appointed its first full-time guide for the Oscars race.
The National Cinema Centre (CNC) has named veteran international film strategist Sébastien Cauchon as its dedicated Academy Awards liaison, a newly created post to provide guidance and expertise to French film teams during an awards-season run, according to Deadline. The job is new. No French official has held it before.
The brief covers French candidates across categories at the 99th Academy Awards, the US film industry's annual prizes voted by members of the Academy. The immediate priority is Andrey Zvyagintsev's Minotaur, France's entry for Best International Feature Film, the Oscar for feature films made largely outside English. Minotaur arrives with festival pedigree as a Cannes prizewinner, as reported by Yahoo.
Cauchon brings long experience in selling French cinema abroad. He served as Director of Communications at Unifrance, the organisation charged with promoting French films internationally, from 2013 to 2020. Since 2020, he has worked independently as an awards and international strategy adviser under his Cinema Collectors banner, a run the CNC describes as that of an expert in Oscars campaigns.
His credits on the campaign trail include The Father, The Substance and Deux. He is also attached to Bunker for this year's awards season, giving him parallel duties alongside the French submission.
France is trying to end a long wait in the international category. Its last victory there came in 1993 with Régis Wargnier's Indochine, more than three decades ago. The country has stayed in the wider Oscars conversation since, including the Best Original Screenplay win for Justine Triet and Arthur Harari for An Anatomy of a Fall.
The appointment was announced on 6 October at CNC headquarters in Paris during a conference on the export of French film and audiovisual works, organised in partnership with Unifrance. The CNC said the role forms part of the launch of its 'Assises de l'export de la création cinématographique et audiovisuelle', a review focused on taking French screen creation abroad, according to the CNC. It formally calls the assignment a mission of référent "Academy Awards", effectively a designated point person.
For fans, this means one named contact for French hopefuls navigating screenings, voting timetables and press. What makes this stand out is the structure: rather than leaving each film to run its own race, France now has a central adviser for the season.
