Dublin Film Critics Circle announce award winners at ADIFF
Members of the Dublin Film Critics Circle have handed out their annual awards for the Audi Dublin International Film Festival. The event, hosted by Limelight Communications, took place at The Speakeasy Bar at Flanagan’s on O’Connell Street. Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius was adjudged to be the best film of this year’s festival. Mr Mendonça’s picture, starring Sonia Braga, details the efforts by a retired music critic to remain in her Recife home.
Best Irish film went to John Butler’s Handsome Devil. Already highly praised at the Toronto Film Festival, Butler’s film, which closed ADIFF 2017, concerns two very different teenagers in a posh, rugby-obsessed boarding school. Butler joined Rob Walpole and Rebecca O’Flanagan, producers of the film, to receive the elegant glass award. Two prizes were presented to Emer Reynolds’s The Farthest. That study of the Voyager space probe took best Irish documentary and – named for a late member of the DFCC – the George Byrne Maverick Award.
Each year, in honour of the Festival’s founder the DFCC is proud to present the Michael Dwyer Discovery Award. This year, it went to members of the Blue Teapot Theatre Company. The actors, all intellectually disabled, gave stunning performances in Len Collin’s Sanctuary, which was greeted with whoops at the festival.
“As ever, it is a gruelling pleasure to head the DFCC jury at ADIFF,” Tara Brady, president of the Circle, commented. “Gruelling because one has to pick between such amazing things as Scott Chambers ‘ tremendous performance in Chicken, the ravishing beauty of Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait, the grand intergenerational tensions of Thithi, the drama of The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, and the heartbreak of Gleason. Pleasure because of the scope of Grainne Humphreys’ programme, and the day or night assistance provided by print transport manager Mary Burke, festival press officer Patrick Stewart and awards sponsor Limelight Communications.”
THE DFCC AWARDS AT THE AUDI DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Best Film – Aquarius
Best Actress – Florence Pugh, Lady Macbeth
Best Actor – Sherwan Haji, The Other Side of Hope
Best Director – Lav Diaz, The Woman Who Left
Best Cinematography – M. David Mullen, The Love Witch
Best Screenplay – Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov, Glory
Best Irish Feature – Handsome Devil
Best Irish Documentary – The Farthest
Best Documentary – I Am Not Your Negro
Jury Prize – Kristopher Avedisian, Donald Cried
Jury Prize – Daouda Coulibaly, Wulu
Jury Prize – My Life as a Courgette
Jury Prize – The Transfiguration
George Byrne Maverick Award – Emer Reynolds
Michael Dwyer Discovery Award – Blue Teapot cast – Sanctuary
