France’s film industry honours Oscar contender “Mustang”

PARIS – France’s Culture minister has wished success in Hollywood’s Academy Awards to “Mustang,” a French-produced Turkish drama that took four awards at a ceremony in Paris.

Audrey Azoulay said Saturday the 41st annual Cesar awards —the country’s equivalent of the Oscars’— has honoured “the French cinema in all its diversity.”

“Mustang,” whose director Deniz Gamze Erguven was born in Turkey and raised mainly in France, won four prizes including best first film at the Cesar ceremony Friday night.

The Turkish-language film is competing in Hollywood Sunday amid controversy caused by the lack of diversity in the Oscar nominations.

The French film industry has also honoured “Fatima,” the story of an Algerian immigrant woman struggling to raise her two daughters in France, with three awards including “best film.”