Sing Street triumphs at Dinard

by Fabien Lemercier

03/10/2016 - Four awards go to John Carney’s feature: the awards for Best Film and Best Screenplay, the Audience Award, and the Heartbeat Award from exhibitors

Sing Street by John Carney

Sing Street [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Irish filmmaker John Carney dominated the list of winners of the 27th Dinard British Film Festival. The film was awarded the Golden Hitchcock Jury Grand Prize 2016 by a jury (headed up by Claude Lelouch and including James D'Arcy, Phil Davis, Colin Vaines, Jalil Lespert, Julie Ferrier, Anne Parillaud, Florence Thomassin, Victoria Bedos and Eric Lagesse) which also awarded him the Hitchcock for Best Screenplay (written by the director). This success was then doubled with the Audience Award and the ‘Heartbeat’ Hitchcock from exhibitor association La Règle du Jeu (which guarantees the film’s distribution in at least 40 theatres in the West of France).

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Unveiled out of competition at the Sundance Film Festival and nominated for seven Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTA), Sing Street, which will be released in France on 26 October by Mars, hit screens in Spain last Friday (with Vértigo Films), and will be released in Italy on 10 November (Bim Distribuzione). Starring Ferdia Walsh Peelo, Lucy Boynton andJack Reynor, the film was produced by Ireland, the United States and the United Kingdom. The plot is set in Dublin in the 1980s, and centres around Conor, a high school kid who must start attending a public school full of unruly students and demanding teachers. To escape this violent world, he sets himself one goal: make an impression on the prettiest girl in the neighbourhood. He then decides to get a band together and throws himself into music…

The jury of the 2016 Dinard Festival gave the ‘Special Mention by President Claude Lelouch’ to Away [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by David Blair (starring Juno Temple and Timothy Spall), and the short film competition was won by Operator by Caroline Bartleet, with audiences voting for Balcony by Toby Fell-Holden.