Grand Prix 2023 to Aki Kaurismäki

“Fallen Leaves” by Aki Kaurismäki, to receive the FIPRESCI Grand Prix 2023 for Best Film of the Year
This is the third time the Finnish director will have won the award

Fallen Leaves, directed by Aki Kaurismäki, has won the FIPRESCI Grand Prix after having been chosen best film of 2023 by the members of the International Federation of Film Critics, FIPRESCI. The vote had the participation of 669 critics from all over the world (a record participation), who chose this Finnish and German production from among all films released after 1 July 2022.  

The other two finalists were The Banshees of Inisherin, by Martin McDonagh, and Tár, by Todd Field, both premiered at the 2022 Venice Festival, where they respectively bagged the Volpi Cup for Best Actor going to Colin Farrell and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress going to Cate Blanchett.

Fallen Leaves premiered at the last Festival de Cannes, where it carried off the Jury Prize. This is the third time that Kaurismäki will have received this recognition from the international critics, which went in 2002 to The Man Without a Past and in 2017 to The Other Side of Hope.

Since its creation in 1999, the FIPRESCI Grand Prix has gone to big-name moviemakers including Maren Ade, Pedro Almodóvar, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alfonso Cuarón, Jean-Luc Godard, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Michael Haneke, Richard Linklater, George Miller and Chloé Zhao, to name but a few.

The FIPRESCI Grand Prix will be presented on September 22 at the opening gala of San Sebastian’s 71st Festival.

Published by
71th San Sebastian International Film Festival
and FIPRESCI – The International Federation of Film Critics
Contact: Gemma Beltrán, press@sansebastianfestival.com