Highlights from the Bayeux Prize Ceremony 2024

The award ceremony for the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy War Correspondents’ Prize, the main event of the festival, gets mixed reactions despite being very popular.

The Bayeux Prize, created in 1994, honors journalists who risk their lives to report on world conflicts. This yearly event, organized by the city of Bayeux with the Calvados department and Normandy region, draws attention to war journalism from the media and public. From October 7 to 13, there are free talks, documentary film projections, and exhibitions all over the city. An awards ceremony happens on Saturday night. It’s very popular and sells out two weeks early. Under a tent with soft lighting, 1,500 well-dressed people sit on chairs. The chairs are blue with covers that are supposed to make the plastic underneath more comfortable. Without backs, I find them very uncomfortable. On stage, there’s a podium and some chairs for the evening’s guests.

Nicolas Poincaré opens the evening at 6:30 PM. Speeches from elected officials and partners follow one after another and, honestly, they all sound quite similar. During the award ceremony, he made many mistakes, forgetting to give the names of the nominees or saying them wrong. He also made jokes that I found very inappropriate, such as « What are they going to do with all these prizes in Gaza? » or « The winners get money, but I don’t know how we’re going to send it to them » while laughing. He seemed very uncomfortable, even though he has been presenting the award ceremony for 30 years. The ceremony was meant to be very serious and formal, but the mistakes made it seem a bit ridiculous. It felt like a parody of the César Awards in Cannes.

Eva Grandvaud