Artist Marcello Quintanilha won the best album prize at the Angouleme comic books festival in France on Saturday for his work, “Listen, pretty Marcia”.

Published last September, the book tells the story of a mother living in a favela near Rio, whose daughter gets caught up in gang violence.

Quintanilha, born in 1971 and a self-taught artist, published his first book in 1999 based on the life of his father, a professional footballer in the 1950s. Since 2002, he has been based in Barcelona, Spain.

In 2016 he won the Angouleme prize for the best thriller, Tungsten, which was subsequently made into a film.

The festival’s top prize, the Grand Prix, was announced on Wednesday and went to Canada’s Julie Doucet — the first Canadian and the fourth woman to win the prize — for the body of her work during her career. — AFP