The Festival du Film policier de Cognac (English: Cognac Crime Film Festival) was an annual film festival that took place in Cognac, France from 1982 to 2007 (with no festival being held in 1991).[1] The festival focused on the police/crime genre and, after 1993, featured a short film and a television film competition. Capitalizing on the popularity of the film festival, an unrelated crime book convention named Polar: Le Festival was inaugurated in 1996.
In 2007, the wine syndicate Bureau National Interprofessionel du Cognac announced that it was withdrawing its support of the 25-year-old film event. Without its main backer, the festival ended. However, another famed wine city, Beaune, Côte d'Or, saw value in the format and two years later launched a successor: the Festival international du Film policier de Beaune. Since 2010, the Cognac-based Polar: Le Festival – originally a strictly literary event – has incorporated a film competition, albeit on a much smaller scale, to compensate for the loss of the original film festival to Beaune.
