Love Me Tender by Anna Cazenave Cambet (France, 2025) has received the Efebo d’Oro Award for Best Film Adapted from a Literary Work at the 47th edition of the Efebo d’Oro Film Festival. The award was presented by a jury comprising Alessia Cervini (Professor of Film History, University of Palermo), Egle Palazzolo (journalist and writer), and Evelina Santangelo (writer and translator).
The jury explained its decision as follows: «For the intensity of a story that, through the life of a protagonist who exists outside socially accepted norms, offers a glimpse into a mindset still deeply rooted in Western society: a specific idea of motherhood and respectability that goes so far as to undermine the right to see one’s child, to live alongside them, and to help them grow. The protagonist’s human dimension is also highly compelling, portrayed with outstanding skill by Vicky Krieps: complex, multifaceted, and constantly evolving, leading to a final choice that becomes a quiet and thoughtful hymn to the vital freedom of self-determination».
Adapted from the novel Love Me Tender by Constance Debré, the film tells the story of Clémence (played by an extraordinary Vicky Krieps), a woman who leaves home, abandoning her husband Laurent and their son Paul, in order to pursue her dream of writing and of emotional freedom.
Not the best of circumstances for what happens next: already divorced, Clémence tells Laurent that she is attracted to women. He begins to exploit Paul’s resentment, making absurd allegations of abuse and claiming that Clémence is responsible for her son’s trauma. Thus begins a war between Clémence and bureaucracy, between Clémence and Laurent, and between Clémence and her own idea of what it means to be a mother.
It is a war of attrition, one that exploits the passage of time and gradually transforms the relationship between Clémence and Paul into one of increasing estrangement. Director Anna Cazenave Cambet and editor Joris Laquittant allow the temporal ellipses to hide within the folds of the narrative, so that the devastating passage of time — during which Clémence is unable to see her son again — becomes an unstoppable cascade. She loses the opportunity to watch Paul grow and mature, to be someone he can rely on, and to build a bond with him proportional to the love they have for one another.
La lucha by José Ángel Alayón Dévora, meanwhile, has received the Efebo Prospettive Award for Best First or Second Feature, worth €1,000, from the jury comprising Benni Atria (film editor), Alessandro De Filippo (Professor of Film and Video History and History of Photography and Reportage at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Catania), and Andrea Segre (director and screenwriter). The same film also received the Michele Mancini Award, presented by a representative group of students from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo and the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Sicily branch.
At the same time, the joint jury of A.N.D.E Palermo (a member of A.N.D.E – Associazione Nazionale Donne Elettrici) and Soroptimist International awarded the Cinema Donna Award to Love Me Tender by Anna Cazenave Cambet and gave a Special Mention to Memory by Vladlena Sandu.
Award citations:
Efebo Prospettive Award for Best First or Second Feature – «In a profound relationship with a place and a culture rarely represented in Spanish and international cinema, the director delivers an intense and meticulous work, both in its aesthetic engagement with the land and bodies and in its approach to the performances of non-professional actors, selected with courage and consistency from within the community portrayed. A tribute to the relationship between father and daughter that is at once delicate and robust, as intimate as it is courageously political in its understated denunciation of the colonial violence that has transformed the Canary Islands, like so many other places in the world, into a land consumed by tourism».
Michele Mancini Award – «Through a linear narrative, the film offers a sincere and authentic portrayal of what it means to experience loss. La lucha, meaning “the struggle”, is not confined to the encounter itself but is lived by the protagonists every day, becoming the true protagonist of the story: it is a bond, a form of cultural and political resistance, at the heart of the arena and within the walls of the home. A symbol of how a tradition can serve as a shield for a community resisting the violence of colonial trauma. The authenticity of the storytelling is heightened by the directorial choices, with close-up shots transforming the struggle into an exchange of intimacy and tenderness».
Cinema Donna Award – «For the authentic and courageous portrayal of a woman who, at a moment of profound vulnerability, finds the strength to assert her identity and freedom. For Vicky Krieps’s intense performance, which makes Clémence a vivid, credible and profoundly human protagonist. With delicacy and truth, the film overturns the more conventional dynamics of child custody in separated couples and illuminates a woman’s journey towards herself, through her choices and through writing, which allows her to remain a mother beyond emotional blackmail and bureaucratic obstacles».
Special Mention – «For the courage with which, through a highly original narrative approach, the film leads us to rediscover a forgotten war: the war in Chechnya. A powerful warning, particularly relevant in the present historical moment, to those who govern: a reminder, once again, of the true consequences of wars and of the immeasurable human cost of childhoods taken away».
