Every year, a group of French film know-it-alls bestow two Louis Delluc awards on the best Gallic film and the best Gallic first feature. The Louis Delluc is a very prestigious award, and in France it is revered more than the Palme d’Or or the Cesar.

The 2008’s Louis Delluc, watchdogs predicted, would go to that year’s Palme d’Or winner Entre les murs (The Class). Laurent Cantet’s Entre les murs is the first native Palme d’Or winner in 21 years.

But as the Louis Delluc was announced last week it had everyone in disbelief. Even the winners.

The award was given to Filmmaker Raymond Depardon’s La Vie Moderne (Modern Life), a cinema verite that discusses the plight of rural French farmers and their way of life which is fast changing, leaving behind traditions and age-old beliefs. The film is third in his series of films about rural dairy farmers in France.

The Delluc first feature was awarded to Samuel Colladey’s L’Apprenti (The Apprentice), again, a film on the farming community. It follows 15-year old Mathieu who learns the trade at Paul’s dairy farm, which leads to the formation of a strong bond as Mathieu finds a father figure that he never had all his life. How it won, we don’t know. The film wasn’t even on the short-list that was released by the jury months before the ceremony.

The message here is not just about calling public attention to the importance of these rural farms, but as Gilles Jacob, the head of the Delluc jury says, it means they want to go “back to the roots of French artistic patrimony and celebrate intimate stories, like La Vie moderne, that emanate a rare depth and sincerity.”

Neorealism is not entirely dead.