The Edinburgh International Film Festival today announced the winners in the six competition categories for feature films at an Awards Ceremony prior to the Closing Gala of the world premiere of THIRD STAR. The awards were presented by EIFF Artistic Director Hannah McGill and Patrons Tilda Swinton and Seamus McGarvey on the penultimate day of the Festival at Cineworld. This year’s winners are:

The Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film, sponsored by the UK Film Council
SKELETONS – Directed by Nick Whitfield

PPG Award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film
DAVID THEWLIS in Mr Nice

Projector.tv Best International Feature Award
THE DRY LAND – Directed by Ryan Piers Williams

Moët New Directors Award
GARETH EDWARDS for Monsters

Best Feature Documentary Award
THE OATH – Directed by Laura Poitras

Standard Life Audience Award
The Award will be announced at the Awards Ceremony

This year’s Michael Powell Jury were actor Sir Patrick Stewart who presided over the five-strong Jury: director Mike Hodges; film curator Laurence Kardish; director Rafi Pitts and actress Britt Ekland.

The Jury citation read: “The Michael Powell Jury, having considered the eleven films in competition for the Best New British Feature Film, is pleased to announce two unanimous decisions. A Special Mention to Edward and Rory McHenry for their animated revision of modern British history, JACKBOOTS ON WHITEHALL, and the Michael Powell Award goes to writer/director Nick Whitfield whose debut feature SKELETONS best exemplifies the spirit of Michael Powell in its original vision and dark humour.”

On awarding David Thewlis the PPG Award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film, the Jury cited:

“The Michael Powell Jury is pleased to announce it has unanimously decided to present the PPG Award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film to David Thewlis for his energetic and electrifying performance as Jim McCann in Bernard Rose’s feature MR NICE.”

David Thewlis commented:

“This is a thrill and totally unexpected, and made all the more special by being honoured by one of my favourite cities in the world. Thank you.”

Lizzie Francke, Senior Production Executive with the UK Film Council, sponsor of the Michael Powell and Best British Short Film awards added:

“The UK Film Council’s support for Edinburgh’s film festival and the Michael Powell award underlines our commitment to promote and nurture new British film talent. Nick Whitfield’s Skeletons is an imaginative and touching debut film and winning the Michael Powell award confirms he is a talent to look out for. And in looking at new talent coming through short filmmaking, Daniel Mulloy’s Baby proves he is a writer/director with enormous promise.”

The Projector.tv Best International Feature Award was deliberated by a Jury of three: comedian/director Ben Miller, actor Jason Isaacs and producer Lynda Myles.

The Jury citation read:

“The winner is THE DRY LAND. We thought this delicate and emotional film took a subject that could have been predictable and explored it with a refreshing subtlety of characterisation, with universally beautiful performances and with a respect for the audience’s intelligence that made it not only a superbly told, gripping and relevant story, but a natural and unanimous winner.

We’d also like to commend two other films that gave us an enormous amount of pleasure locked, as we were, in dark rooms all day during the longest unbroken stretch of Edinburgh sunshine on record: For transporting us with a magnificent aesthetic flair, for its hypnotic cast and for creating an entirely believable world of monstrously amoral hit men that, despite ourselves, we all wanted to hang out with, we commend the epic landscape of SNOWMAN’S LAND.

And for giving us 2 hours of unbridled snorting laughter with a bucket-load of soppily embarrassing feelgood tears thrown in for good measure, we commend the unalloyed good time that is BARRY MUNDAY.”

The Moët New Directors Award was deliberated by a Jury of three, and their citation read: “The very high standard of the competitors for the Moët New Director’s Award made the selection process as difficult as it was pleasurable. There were, for all of the jurors, four stand-out films. We would like to give special mentions to NOTHING PERSONAL, SON OF BABYLON and WINTER’S BONE. And we give the award, which acknowledges both ability and potential, to MONSTERS and its maker Gareth Edwards, whose extraordinary talents we confidently expect to see a great deal more of in the years to come.”

EIFF Artistic Director, Hannah McGill said:

“We have had a tremendous festival experience this year, and it’s a particular pleasure to close with the world premiere of a film as beautiful, idiosyncratic and moving as Third Star. I warmly congratulate all of our award-winners, as well as the generous supporters of those awards; and I thank the wonderful people on our juries for their enthusiasm and dedication.”

The Documentary Jury citation read:

“The jury found themselves faced with a difficult choice between two very different but oddly complementary films. We would first like to make a special mention: of Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s RESTREPO, for its visceral intensity and unflinching honesty. But in recognition of the complexity and subtlety of its storytelling; the brilliance of its conception and execution; and the presence of an authorial voice that is strong without being didactic, the jury awards the EIFF 2010 Best Feature Documentary Award to Laura Poitras for THE OATH.”

All feature film winners also received a personalised magnum of Moët champagne, and attending the ceremony in Edinburgh to receive their awards in person were: Nick Whitfield for SKELETONS, Ryan Piers Williams and America Ferrera for THE DRY LAND and David Thewlis for MR NICE.

The EIFF 2010 Short Film Awards, which were presented at a ceremony on Tuesday evening in Edinburgh, went to:
UK Film Council Award For Best British Short Film
BABY – Directed by Daniel Mulloy

Best International Short Film Award sponsored by Steedman & Company
RITA – Directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza

Scottish Short Documentary Award supported by Baillie Gifford
MARIA’S WAY – Directed by Anne Milne

McLaren Award for Best New British Animation in partnership with BBC Film Network
STANLEY PICKLE – Directed by Victoria Mather

Short Film Nominee Edinburgh, for the European Film Awards 2010
MARIA’S WAY – Directed by Anne Milne

The Michael Powell Award

Named in homage to one of Britain’s most original filmmakers and inaugurated in 1993, the Michael Powell Award has been supported by the UK Film Council since 2001. Rewarding imagination and creativity in British filmmaking, the award is judged by an international jury and carries a cash prize of £15,000.

Sarah Petit directs this somewhat disappointing offering and though it has some beauty in the way she has shot the film and the locations she has chosen one thing remains clear the movie itself lacks any real point or drive. This is a shame as French cinema is some of the best and usually fits in well at festivals like EIFF but this was a real disappointment.

The movie centres on a small time thief Bruno, Guillaume Depardieu, and his relationship with a supply teacher Isabelle, Florence Loiret Caille, who he meets during a car accident in which he robs her silver watch. The move then moves with classic French pace to telling a rather confusing and slow story of Bruno and Isabelle as they begin their romance. Most of the story in the first half is centred around a small gated apartment block in which Bruno, Ali, his mother Nouria.

Added to this gated complex is the arrival of Manu, recently released from prison, who comes and stays with Bruno. The movie tries to give some indication of a relationship between Nouria and Manu in the first instance that the two characters meet but does not try to delve into it. For Bruno we get to see him commit crimes that he is quite adept at but each of the crimes, breaking into a house and stealing a car, seemed weak and lack any narrative.

It is the latter theft thought that causes the issues for Bruno. After selling the care he had stollen the guys who bought it come round and show it off to Ali, after a fight Ali gets into the back seat and they speed off. They get stopped by the police and eventually the two guys who bought the stolen car tell the police that car belongs to Bruno, Ali, knowing that this is not the case, says nothing and just sits there refusing to talk.

This then sets off a chain of events that would have the school teachers run away with Bruno for a life on the road. What was odd about the first part of the film is the fact that when the police come to the school to talk with the teachers she tells them that she has to use the toilet. After going in she then runs out the window then, as she is running, calls Bruno on his mobile to tell him he needs to get out of the flat. Surly she could have called him from the toilet and then saved a whole lot of trouble.

The film then takes on a weird Deliverance/Bonny and Clyde tone with Bruno and Isabelle on the run from the police over a stolen car – something that he would have been found not guilty of if Ali told the police that the car was not Bruno’s. The film is slow and sadly drags mainly because they are on the run for no reason other than a stolen car, once that reality sinks in you start to really wonder where the film is going.

There are some really beautiful and gentle bits in the film, the scene in which they break into the house on the river for food and come across the owner is genuine and genius, but that was about it. The whole first half of the film is lost and forgotten and we are left with a second half that really didn’t give us much of anything.

This was Guillaume Depardieu last film before his death in 2008 and his character seems confusing, angry, and experienced. But with that said there is not enough to make you truly understand the characters though each of the performances was believable and honest it seems that the overal storyline may have hindered then. However a saving grace of the film was the soundtrack that had some pretty amazing music, alas we have been unable to get a track listing this far.

Edinburgh 2010. We were really lucky to get the chance to interview British actor Jason Isaac at this years EIFF. It was a lucky encounter as Niger was at the screening ‘A Dry Land’ and after the film he got the pluck to ask him if he would be willing to do a little interview with TNC.

It was just chance and he seemed more than happy to give the film as much support as possible and agreed to the interview. He told us that during his time as a student he was up at the Edinburgh Fringe every year and he loved the place. This year Jason is a a International Judge at this years festival and it was a great little chat.

Skeletons is nominated for this years Michael Powell Award and is directed by Nick Whitfield.

What was it that drew you to this film by a first time director [Nick Whitfield]?

JI: Well You know I was sent this script and it was a small part in a small film and there was a link to the short film [Rebecca] that he did with the same actors and I was completely mesmerised. I had never seen anything quite like it frankly, I thought it created a whole world that was completely realistic, surreal and fantastic, and then I was intrigued by it and then I read the script.

How did the full length script differ from the short film?

JI: It’s very rare that people are able to explained the short film into a feature and make it work. But he’s kind of expanded the world and it seemed completely familiar and I bought the premiss of the entire thing and suddenly I would step back for a second and I found it totally hilarious and emotional.

Why did you say yes to the film?

It was a easy decision to go and make it and when I said was was interested in making it and be part of the gang everybody tried to put me off. ‘You know they have no money…you will have to live in a cottage with the actors and the crew, cooking your own food…’ and all that stuff. But for years I’ve been coming to the festival staying in a one bedroom flat and the only thing that is ever interesting in the work. But the hardest thing about the film wasn’t the making of it, it is exquisite and so well realised, it’s how do you describe to people what the film is about?

You have to describe it as a hybrid as if Terry Gilliam directed Becket or it’s derrick and Clyde at the hands of Mike Leigh, you keep coming up with these completely unsatisfying cross-breed suggestions and try and let people know what type of film it is. All I can say is that is should be seen by as many people as possible. It’s so British and such an idiosyncratic and I hope it gets an audience.

If the question was what made me want to do the film then the answer is just watch the film and see. And I was afraid I was not going to be able to come up with a character that fitted into that world because Ed and Andy created such a believable universe that i thought I was going to be walking on egg shells to try and create a third character that wasn’t the short film.

Is Skeletons part of this new wave of British Films like last years Michael Powell Award winner Moon Dir, Duncan Jones?

It is peculiarly British and I don’t think anyone by Nick could have come up with the idea and directed this. One of the odd things for me is that am normally full of suggestions on set why doesn’t this happen or this persons character might want to do this. This is so uniquely his that I was kind of dumbstruck by it.

Do I think its moon? I don’t think its anything. Its not a noisy film, Moon was a magnificent film…This is not noisy like that it is like a spiders web incredibly delicate and you either submit and surrender yourself to its surreal internal logic. When I went to see a screening of it a few weeks ago from the very first frame of it I was in that world and loved it.

The music from the film is pretty unique and is almost a third player after the actors and the script do you think that helps the film?

JI: I think it does, its a very small film with only a few actors and its a house and a landscape, which he shoots in a epic way, you get a sense of Britain in a strange way. This kind of uniquely bleak and lonely landscape and the need for connection in people from the way that he shoots the countryside. I think it’s one on those thing when you soot a film your not entirely sure how things are going to go together, but ever element of this has been so finely judged that it just works.

I thought that trains and train tracks played an important role in the film?

JI: It was beautiful to walk through the old stations and for all of it it felt timeless. It’s not specifically anytime, its not the 50s or the 30s. And the technology and design of the contraptions that they use to go into peoples closets and seek out the skeletons was just endlessly quaint and funny. There is not part of this that doesn’t make me laugh but its not an out and out comedy. In the same way that the timelessness of the trains and the train station and peoples cloths was perfectly all judged to not be in a world on its own. Yet at the same time it feels familiar and fabulous in the true sense of the word.

You also get to use quite a strong northern accent?

Well I had to come up with something, I had to come up with a character. They called him the colonel so I thought ok may be he was in the army and I gave myself this ear to ear scar, I don’t know how visible it is on the big screen, which gave me a voice of a man who had had his throat cut. There is something beautiful about him he’s paradoxically strict and a disciplinary and they are terrified of him, but he absolutely loves him like a father, and he needs them.

I understood it emotionally and you try to deconstruct it intellectually and it all of a sudden starts to fall apart. I just had to come up with something and as soon as I started speaking, as soon as I found a voice for him, and a look for him – the fact that he never takes his cap off ever even when he goes to sleep – as soon as those early decisions where made, that Ed and Andy who play the main characters, where very welcoming and we felt like a triangle. They have been a pair for so long, they are a duo in real life and they preform together and they have done for years. but something just felt like it worked and if it works for an audience as it felt like it worked in the set, sometimes it doesn’t, but i think this one does, but then am slightly biased.

There is luck and then there is shear luck, what we have is ‘OMG you lucky bastards’. Today during the second screening of the day for us, A Dry Land starring America Ferrera, walking into the theatre who should be sitting there but Scouse Hollywood Icon Jason Isaacs – we don’t need to mention his credits, you know who he is!

After the film and many text from friends I asked him if he would be up for doing a interview with us there and then and the legend said YES.  We are really honoured to have a interview going live on our site 9am tomorrow due inpart to Isaacs genuinely kind and friendly manner – and he’s from Liverpool two!

As well as asking him about why he decided to do such a small budget film, what was the draw, and what he hopes people wil get out of this incredible debut Skeletons by Nick Whitfield.  This really is one of the key films of this years festival and one that stands out and then some, if you get a chance see it and support British Cinema anyway you can.