This site includes the postings from the Irish Aires email list. This includes a listing of Irish/Celtic events in the Houston area and other information that the Irish Aires radio program posts.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Irish Film Wins At Cannes

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/ Irish War Film Wins At Cannes By David Germain Associated Press CANNES, FRANCE - British director Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a saga set amid Ireland's struggle for independence in the early 1920s, won top honors Sunday in a unanimous vote at the Cannes Film Festival. ADVERTISEMENT It was the first time veteran filmmaker Loach won the main prize after seven earlier entries in the main competition at the world's most prestigious film festival. The Wind That Shakes the Barley stars Cillian Murphy as an Irish medical student who takes up arms against a reign of terror by the Black and Tans, British troops sent in to quell calls for independence. Loach, who previously won the third-place prize at Cannes with 1990's Hidden Agenda and 1993's Raining Stones, said he hoped the film would be a small step encouraging the British to "confront their imperial history. And maybe, if we tell the truth about the past, maybe we tell the truth about the present." Prizes for best actor and actress went to ensemble casts. Penelope Cruz and her five key cast mates in Pedro Almodovar's Volver, including Carmen Maura, Yohana Cobo and Lola Duenas, shared the actress prize. The film, a comic drama about women making do without men, won the screenplay honor for Almodovar. The men of Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb's World War II saga Days of Glory, about North African Muslims who volunteered in the fight to free France from the Nazis, received the best-actor honor. The cast included French stars Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri and Sami Bouajila. Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu won the directing prize for Babel, a multicultural drama about loosely linked families around the globe. The grand prize for second-place film was given to French director Bruno Dumont's Flanders, a drama following soldiers through a grisly tour of duty in the Middle East. ---- HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com
Posted by: Unknown / 11:26 PM
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