Semiramis Award for Best Casting - ICDN

Barcelona, Oct. 16th. 2020. The SEMIRAMIS AWARD FOR BEST CASTING ceremony was held in the welcoming setting of the Sitges Film Festival. 

French casting director Élodie Demey, along with co-casting directors Marie-France Michel and Justine Léocadie, will be the first to take home a newly-minted figurine in honor of their work on the 2019 feature Hors Normes (The Specials), directed by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano.

The International Casting Directors Network (ICDN) established the first-ever international prize for best casting of a feature film in 2016, in order to spotlight the essential role and extraordinary achievements of casting directors in the filmmaking process. Since then, the award has been presented at Locarno Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, and this year in Barcelona, at the Sitges Fantastic Film Festival of Catalunya.

This year, the award also received a new polish, in the form of an official statuette and new award name: the Semiramis Award for Best Casting.

Semiramis was a legendary Assyrian queen who ruled with wisdom, strength and steadiness. The statuette is an original work by Swiss sculptor Peter Hartmann, whose bronzes are exhibited throughout Geneva in parks and public places. Peter Hartmann (1921-2007).