President Emmanuel Macron on Monday congratulated French director Justine Triet for her Golden Globes victory, breaking his previous silence over the successes of her hit film “Anatomy of a Fall” after she bitterly criticized his government. Triet picked up best screenplay and best non-English language film at the Golden Globes, traditionally seen as a bellwether for the Oscars which are handed out on March 10.

Her courtroom drama about a woman charged with murdering her husband already won the Palme d’Or for best film at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and was a box office smash hit in France and beyond. “Proud to see French cinema recognized at the Golden Globes,” Macron wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“Congratulations to Justine Triet, the actors and the entire team of the film Anatomy of a Fall,” he added. The message was in marked contrast to his glacial silence after Triet’s victory in Cannes, where the director used her acceptance speech to launch a lacerating denunciation of his government.

She slammed the “shocking” suppression of pension protests and said the “commercialization of culture that this neoliberal government supports is in the process of breaking France’s cultural exception”. Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak hit back that she was “gobsmacked” by Triet’s “unfair” comments at one of France’s most prominent events.

Some commentators saw this rancour as the reason why France put forward another film as its entry for best international picture at the Oscars, although the decision is made by an independent commission of professionals. They chose “The Taste of Things”, an homage to French gastronomy, which won best director at Cannes for French-Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung and played well with international audiences, but fared poorly in France where many saw it as cliched.

Triet herself reposted social media users who said the snub “stinks of revenge” and another who called “The Taste of Things” “one of the most boring films at Cannes”. Macron recently also courted controversy in film circles with his staunch defense of actor Gerard Depardieu, who has been charged with rape and faces other sexual assault allegations, saying he was being subjected to a “manhunt”. — AFP