Cannes prize for Bobby Sands film

[Jim]

Some mothers son wasnt about Sands, it was a fictional hunger striker and his mate, Sands was only in about 4 scenes.

Can't wait to see this film though, going to be a good one.

[earl]

Steve McQueen's Bobby Sands film, Hunger, wins Camera d’Or at Cannes


British director Steve McQueen steals the limelight as he accepts the Camera dOr

Britain may not have had any films in the official Cannes Film Festival competition, but one British film-maker managed to steal some of the limelight at the awards ceremony.

Steve McQueen, 38, won the Camera d’Or for best first feature film. Having made his name as a video artist who won the Turner Prize in 1999 and as an official war artist in Iraq in 2003, he found recognition last night at the world’s largest film showcase.

He was singled out for Hunger, his acclaimed film about the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who died in the Maze Prison in 1981 after 66 days of his campaign to be recognised as a political prisoner. It was shown at the festival’s second competition, Un Certain Regard.

The Palme d’Or went to Entre les murs (The Class), an unsentimental docu-drama set in a tough Paris high school. It had earned one of the warmest receptions from a jaded audience of critics and industry executives who had been largely disappointed by the 22 films in the official competition.

Directed by Laurent Cantet and using real teachers and pupils, the film is based on an autobiographical novel by François Begaudeau and explores themes of race and prejudice.

Sean Penn, the president of the judging panel, had made clear at the beginning of the festival that the panel would be looking for a winner with “something to say about the times” in which we live.

The awards ceremony was filled with stars such as Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie and Catherine Deneuve, but they were all eclipsed by a newcomer. Jolie and Deneuve had been widely tipped to win best actress, but the award went instead to the Brazilian Sandra Corveloni.

The 43-year-old wowed the jury with her performance as a pregnant mother in Line of Passage, which was co-directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas. She plays a housemaid whose sons are tempted into a life of crime. “I’m proud to be in a profession that reflects what a nation is,” she said as she accepted her award.

Salles is best known internationally for The Motorcycle Diaries, his acclaimed film about Che Guevara’s epic trip across Latin America. Last night, Steven Soderbergh’s film about the revolutionary hero saw its Oscar-winning star, Benicio Del Toro, win the Best Actor award.

Deneuve and Clint Eastwood, were both awarded a special prize for their contributions to cinema. Many had assumed that it would be fifth time lucky for Eastwood with his latest film, The Exchange, which stars Jolie in a true story of a woman whose son goes missing.

Top honours at Cannes have served as a launch point for such high-profile films as Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.

Prize winners

Palme d’Or

Entre les murs (The Class) by Laurent Cantet, a “fly-on-the-wall” story about life in a classroom

Grand Prix runner-up prize

Gomorrah by Matteo Garrone, a movie about the Italian Mafia

Jury prize

Paolo Sorrentino for Il Divo, about former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti

Best Actor

Benicio Del Toro, right, for his title performance in Che, Steven Soderbergh’s film about the revolutionary hero

Best Actress

Sandra Corveloni for her performance as a maid in Line of Passage

Best First Feature (Camera d’Or)

Steve McQueen for Hunger, a biopic about the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands

Best Screenplay

Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne for The Silence of Lorna

Cannes Lifetime Achievement Award

Clint Eastwood and Catherine Deneuve

[earl]

IRA victim hits out at hunger strike film

A film about IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands's final days is glorifying criminals, a victim claimed yesterday.

Republicans should be hounded for war crimes, not recognised by the Cannes Film Festival prize-winning movie Hunger, Jim Dixon added.

Mr Dixon was injured in the IRA's 1987 Poppy Day bombing in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, which killed 11 people. "The IRA should be held accountable for the horrendous deeds that they carried out," he said.

"Are they not ashamed of themselves? In any other country where this happened there would be a mass outcry for the government to take them to court for war crimes.

"These men are looking for credibility but if you trailed hell you couldn't find any worse."

Artist Steve McQueen's debut film won the prestigious Camera d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival in the south of France last night. Hunger does not yet have a UK release date.

Sands refused food for 66 days in the Maze prison, Co Antrim, in 1981 in a bid to be recognised as a political prisoner. He was the first of 11 republicans to die.

A spokesman for the producers said: "I believe that people need to see the film before passing judgment."

[earl]

Film cements 'enduring legacy' of Sands, says hunger striker

PRAISE has been heaped on the makers of a film about hunger striker Bobby Sands which won a major award at the Cannes film festival.

Among those who congratulated the people behind 'Hunger' was former hunger striker Raymond McCartney, who took part in the first protest in 1980.

The film won the Camera d'Or award at the closing ceremony of the festival de Cannes on Sunday night. It is a prize which is given to the director of the best first-time feature film in the festival.

By director Steve McQueen, the film star actors Liam Cunningham and Michael Fassbender, who takes on the role of Sands.

In a statement last night, Raymond McCartney, now a Sinn Fein Assembly member, said he welcomed the award that was given to the film.

Mr McCartney took part in the first Maze hunger strike of 1980 and spent 53 days without food.

Legacy

"This award for first-time film-makers, which was given to Steve McQueen by US actor Dennis Hopper, confirms the huge interest in the hunger strikes and the enduring legacy Bobby Sands and his comrades have left," he said.

"This is an important subject and I look forward to the film being screened in Ireland."

A spokesman for the film said Mr McQueen had been overwhelmed at receiving the award.

"It was a delightful surprise and something which Steve McQueen was very humbled by and not something that he was expecting -- it is a very positive thing for him," said the spokesman. "It was very much a great surprise and he said himself he was very honoured to have been recognised in this way for his work."

The film is a portrayal of the last six weeks of the life of the IRA hunger striker and is co-written by award-winning playwright Enda Walsh ('Disco Pigs') and Steve McQueen.

It was the opening film for Cannes' Un Certain Regard, a sidebar to the main festival competition, where it received a five-minute standing ovation.

An Irish and UK co-production, it was funded by Channel 4, Northern Ireland Screen and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland.

Congratulated

Yesterday, a spokesperson for the Irish Film Board congratulated the makers and said they were delighted at the result.

It has not yet been decided when the film will open in Irish cinemas -- a date has not yet been set by the distributors, Pathe.

'Hunger' has secured sales deals with distributors in the US, UK, France, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Australia and New Zealand.

Arts Minister Martin Cullen also paid tribute when news of the award came through, saying it illustrated how far the country had moved in the past 25 years.

This is the third year in a row that Ireland has been honoured at Cannes, with the Ken Loach film 'The Wind that Shakes The Barley' and 'Garage' having received awards previously.


Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands in the film 'Hunger', which has won the Camera d'Or award at Cannes

[earl]

Sympathetic portrait bound to cause a stir

There may not be many British films at Cannes this year, but Steve McQueen's Hunger about the death of Bobby Sands in the Maze prison was the most controversial film on la Croisette from the moment the programme was announced.

The rumours – that the film showed the IRA gunman in a positive light – were correct. This enthralling account of Sands' 66 days on hunger strike to try to get better conditions for IRA prisoners, seems especially pertinent at a time when the atrocities of Abu Ghraib remain vivid.

A written synopsis of the political climate in the Maze in 1981 is proffered before we see the first image. McQueen starts the story in the minimalist style of the films he has made for art galleries. Sands is noticeable by his absence; as with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, McQueen uses other characters to lead the audience to the central one.

We see prison officer Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham) getting ready for a day at work. We walk into the jail with Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan), a new inmate, who in keeping with the blanket protest and no-wash policy of "non-conforming" republican prisoners, refuses to wear prison clothes, claiming to be a political prisoner. The disgusting conditions in the cells with excreta smeared across the walls are stunningly recreated. The director, in his most narrative-driven work, cannot resist adapting the arresting techniques of his gallery films: he leaves the camera on visually interesting motifs such as a circular pattern in the muck on a cell wall; the sound design constantly features staccato banging that resembles the sound made when prisoners smash metal trays on the bars. Whenever we hear the voice of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, McQueen turns the camera on abstract images, ensuring she is an omnipresent force.

When the officers come to forcibly wash the inmates, the film abandons its austere tone and Sands (Michael Fassbender in an extraordinary performance) finally enters the picture, in the first scenes of violent confrontation. Sands is forced to wash and his hair is cut. It's a brutal confrontation and just as it seems that McQueen is siding with Sands, he cuts to a shot of the prison officer Lohan being murdered in front of his mother.

The centrepiece of the film is a 22-minute single shot in which Sands reveals his plan to go on hunger strike to Fr Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham), Sands debates the merits of the hunger strike and whether his near-certain death is suicide or martyrdom. The empathy McQueen conveys in Hunger suggests he feels it's the latter.

McQueen highlights the remarkable physical changes during a hunger strike rather than the impact the ordeal had on the outside world. The sympathetic portrait within this excellent film will cause much debate, and outrage.

A partial trailer can be viewed here:

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/news/first-night-hunger-cannes-film-festival-829303.html

[Blue Angel]

Lets have a look at the trailer I'm intrigued by this - one of my first memories of learning anything about the troubles in Ireland was Sands death in 1981. I'd be interested to see this, it's a shame Terence MacSwiney who was perhaps the most prominent hunger striker before the ten who died has not had any movie or biopic of him done as that would be intriguiging as well but perhaps of minor and very specialist interest as that is over 80 years ago now.

[Bilk]

No one, I think is saying that the depiction of Sands's death is a true one in this award, just that it makes a good film. Much the same as the "Collins" bunch of lies made good film.

[Jim]

Looks excellent to be honest. Can't wait to see it now.

[Blue Angel]

I thought so to from the trailer- it looked grimy and gritty - no hollywood dressing up of the era -hopefully that look is maintained in the whole movie. I have particular respect for Sands so I will be interested to see this.

[Jim]

May 27, 2008 18:29:49 GMT Bilk said:

No one, I think is saying that the depiction of Sands's death is a true one in this award, just that it makes a good film. Much the same as the "Collins" bunch of lies made good film.

The new era of Irish political films, starting with the Wind that shakes the barley are being praised for their realism and sticking to the facts (although I accept that film had fictional characters it was largely based on actual facts) unlike Collins which took "artistic freedom" a bit too far and ended up being only half-true. But thats films for you!

This film is different because its fresh in the memories of so many people, millions of people, as it was broadcasted around the world and, since it was only about 26 years ago. So I can't see the director getting away with writing then filming a bunch of garbage that wasn't true.

BA its not a Hollywood film anyway, it was funded by Channel 4 and I'm not sure what industry produced it (British or Irish or NI) but it doesn't really matter, they're all very co-operative with each other and the NI and Irish industries are practically the same apart from having a different committie.