James Tabor recently published a post on his TaborBlog entitled, “‘Jesus Discovery’ Film Wins at Cannes Film Festival.” Now, “Cannes Film Festival” is the common and popular title of the Cannes International Film Festival (French Festival de Cannes or the larger La Festival International du Film de Cannes), which dates back to the 1930s and is one of the most prestigious and popular film festivals in the world.
The film produced by Tabor and Jacobovici did not win an award at THE Cannes Film Festival. It won an award from the Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards, which is an unrelated awards program that extends beyond film to corporate media and TV, and nowhere bills itself as a “festival” at all. The closest it comes is the word “gala,” which is how it describes the actual awards ceremony. The ceremony awards multiple trophies in each category to film makers who nominate themselves at a modest €250. Their motto is “Establishing the world’s standard for corporate films since 2010.” This year there are a total of 120 awards chosen from 719 submissions. No word on how many submissions there were for the “Science & Knowledge” category, but there was only one trophy awarded in the category last year.
It should be needless to say, but the title of Tabor’s blog post is entirely deceptive. Whether that deception was calculated or the product of naivety and lack of forethought is not clear (the latter may be possible in light of the author’s misspelling of Émile Puech’s name, by the way). As the jury responsible for this award cannot possibly be qualified to speak in any informed way about the scholarship represented in the film, and the quality of the filmmaking may not even have played a role, the award may be little more than an acknowledgement of participation (and receipt of payment).
[illustration coming]
Daniel O. McClellan 