Argo wins 'French Oscar', the Cesar

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Nominations for the César Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscar, were announced this morning in Paris and, much like last year, a surprise film beat out the perceived favorites to lead the pack.

Multi-hyphenate Noémie Lvovsky scored 13 nominations this morning with Camille Redouble, outperforming Michael Haneke’s awards darling Amour. Last year, Poliss – interestingly, a film also directed by a woman – had 13 nominations to The Artist‘s ten. The Gaumont-backed Camille is a romantic comedy about a fortysomething mother of a 24-year-old girl who, on a boozy present-day New Year’s Eve, time travels back to high school circa 1985. This is Lvovsky’s fifth film as a director and here she’s nominated in that category along with Original Screenplay and Best Actress mentions. The film also has a further seven acting nods. Following Camille is the multi-Oscar-nominated Amour with ten nominations including Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Actor and Actress (for the Oscar-nommed Emmanuelle Riva). Also with ten nods is Benoît Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen which opened the Berlin Film Festival nearly a year ago.

Ben Affleck’s Argo also picked up a nod as Best Foreign Film.

The César Awards will be handed out in Paris on February 22