Who is Paul Kircher, the young French actor who received the Revelation Award at the 2024 Venice Film Festival?

This new prize won on Saturday in Venice by the young actor confirms the irresistible rise of one of the most prominent new faces in French cinema.

At the 2024 Venice Film Festival, Paul Kircher, 22, received the Marcello Mastroiani Award for Best Emerging Actor on Saturday, September 7, for his role in Their children after themadapted from the best-selling novel by Nicolas Mathieu.

Adapted from a book that won the 2018 Prix Goncourt, the film is “the story of teenagers and a generation who grow up with a burning desire to participate in the world and are cast aside“, summed up the young actor upon receiving his award. He then thanked, in Italian, the jury chaired by Isabelle Huppert and the festival, who offered him the first important prize of his young career.

Child of the ball, Paul Kircher is the son of actors Irène Jacob and Jérôme Kircher. He took his first steps with Christophe Honoré in The high school student (2022), which had already earned him the award for best performance at the San Sebastian International Film Festival that year.

Then his fame exploded last year in the fantasy drama The Animal Kingdom by Thomas Caillet, in which he was impressively accurate. His performance in this film, which won both the Louis Delluc Prize and five Césars, and which saw him play opposite Romain Duris on equal terms, made him one of the most prominent new faces in French cinema.

In Their children after them, A melancholic fresco on adolescence and social reproduction expected in theaters on December 4, Paul Kircher should confirm his talent. He plays one of the two main characters, Anthony, a worker’s child madly in love with the daughter of a notable.

Directed by twin brothers, Zoran and Ludovic Boukherma, aged 32, the film follows over several years the destiny of these teenagers from a town in Lorraine hit by deindustrialisation, as well as their friends.

In 2025, we should find Paul Kircher in Cédric Klapisch’s next feature film.