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Movies & TV

09th Sep 2017

Irish film-maker wins one of the world’s top movie awards for his new crime thriller

The Irish film contingent continues to go from strength to strength.

Rory Cashin

The Irish film contingent continues to go from strength to strength.

Martin McDonagh screened his latest film Three Billboard Outside Ebbing, Missouri to a fantastic reaction at the 74th Venice Film Festival, which is usually a pretty good indication of how the Oscar nominations might play out.

McDonagh, who previously wrote and directed In Bruges with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, and then followed that up with Seven Psychopaths, also with Farrell, has now gone on to win the Best Screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival for his new movie.

When he went up to collect the award, McDonagh said he and the cast had enjoyed a “beautiful time, beautiful pasta and loads and loads of beautiful negronis” in Venice, but that winning the prize on Satuday was “the most beautiful part.”

The film, which stars Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Peter Dinklage, Caleb Landry Jones, Sam Rockwell and Abbie Cornish, deals with a mother who personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter’s murder when they fail to catch the culprit, and will be released in Ireland on 12 January 2018.

Clip via FoxSearchlight

Meanwhile, the actual top prize for the night, the Golden Lion award, went to Guillermo Del Toro for his new movie The Shape Of Water.

Del Toro, who previously directed the likes of Pan’s Labrynth, Blade II, Hellboy and Pacific Rim, this time has delivered something like a fairy tale love story set in 1962, between a mute lab assistant and a creature experimented on in the top secret lab she works in.

The movie stars Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Doug Jones, Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins, and will be released in Irish cinemas on 12 February 2018.

Clip via FoxSearchlight