France 2000

19-year old Sofia Mestari will represent France in Stockholm after winning the French National final on February 15th with the song "On aura le ciel". Thanks to my friend Ian Fowell for telephoning me with this news.

Ian tells me that Sofia is of Moroccan origin and the song has similarities with Marlayne's Dutch Eurovision entry last year. Second-placed Jessica Ferley's song was a Celine Dion style opus. Patrick Fiori (France ESC1993) sang at the start of the show, was part of the judging panel, and read out the placings. Of the other acts Mademoiselle was an all-girl group with a bouncy pop song, and Hologramme was a 2 boy, 2 girl otfit who couldn't sing well. More new later along with pictures & clips.

France 3 presents the 14 songs competing to appear in Stockholm on Tuesday February 15th from 1955-2215 UK time. The presenters will be Julien Lepers and Karen Cheryl, and there'll be the usual collection of nostalgic clips.
France 3 can be received all over Europe on the Telecom satellite.

Title	English Trans.	Performer(s)	Place	Martin Huber of OGAE Austria writes "The French final will be held at the Olympia in Paris on 15th February 2000." He adds that he will be there along with OGAE-Austria-President Sven Koblischek Thanks Martin! Here's the list of songs and performers taken from the French OGAE fan club web site http://www.geocities.com/eurofans Thanks to Alex Rouffignac for sending me the link to this essential resource for French-speaking song contest fans. The 1999 French final was also held at Olympia, and it seems France 3 will again be making the programme, and again the winner will be decided by a jury, rather than televoting. Jean-François Loiseau writes: I have just gone through the list of the French performers for ESC 2000. As in the past, they are all unknown! I have never heard of them. I do not know where they are coming from but according to the name of the performers, I guess that the multi-ethnic face of France will be well represented in this selection. Thanks, Jean! If you have any more news or comments, please e-mail me, Geoff Harrison, at my contact page and I'll credit your contribution.
Autour de toi	Around you	Orijin	3
SOS	S.O.S	Mademoiselle
Espoir	Hope	Jessica Ferley	2
L'amour en noir et blanc	Love in black and white	Ebony
Pense à moi	Think of me	Gildas Thomas
Tu en fais trop	You do too much of it	ZH
Tendresses	Tendernesses	Jenny Zana
Nous deux	Us two	Stéphane Godsend
On aura le ciel	There will be the sky	Sofia Mestari	1
Libérez	Release	Guillaume Eyango
Maintenant	Now	Alexandre Aiden
Une très belle histoire d'amour	A very beautiful history of love	Christophe Sarti
L'amour avec des gants	Love with gloves	Hologramme
Jeunes solidaires	Interdependent young people	Soundkaïl

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