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Movies & TV

28th May 2017

Colin Farrell’s new Irish film wins one of the top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival

Rory Cashin

irish accents

Just a few years ago, Colin Farrell was making waves with awards-magnet Irish-produced movie The Lobster, and he’s doing it again now.

Farrell stars in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer as a surgeon, and both he and his wife (Nicole Kidman) get caught up in the menacing plans of dysfunctional teenager (Barry Keoghan).

The film was directed and co-written by the same guy who gave us The Lobster, and was also co-produced by Irish production company Element Pictures.

With the Cannes Film Festival closing out tonight, the award winners were announced, as The Killing Of A Sacred Deer was awarded Best Screenplay by the jury, which included the likes of Will Smith and much-loved director Pedro Almovodar.

Clip via The Upcoming

Sacred Deer star Nicole Kidman was also awarded a Special Award, having appeared in three other productions across the festival including The Beguiled (which also stars Colin Farrell, check out the trailer here), How To Talk To Girls At Parties, and the first episode of the second season of Top Of The Lake (trailer here).

Other winners on the night were Sofia Coppola, who won Best Director for The Beguiled, Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor for his part in sex-traffic thriller You Were Never Really Here (which actually shared the Best Screenplay award with Sacred Deer), and Diane Kruger won Best Actress for her role in terrorist-revenge drama In The Fade.

Usually a potential indication of possible Oscar-shout outs a few months early, the films this year have been said to be way “too edgy” for potential Academy Award consideration, as can be seen by the movie’s that won the top three prizes.

The Jury Prize went to Russian drama Loveless, a film about an unhappy divorcing couple forced to team up to find their missing son who wondered away from them during one of their more intense arguments.

The Grand Prix award went to French drama 120 BPM, a based-on-a-true-story AIDS activist movie, and the top award, the Palme d’Or, went to Sweden-Germany-France-Denmark co-production The Square, a movie about a museum curator who finds his life thrown into turmoil when he is mugged.

Yeah, they’re not exactly crowd-pleasing stuff like La La Land, but fingers crossed Farrell’s film maintains the buzz right up the next awards season.

 

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