Cannes Directors’ Fortnight compensated for the lack of presence of British filmmakers in the festival’s main categories that year by awarding Clio Bernard, who received the most attention, the Directors’ Fortnight People’s Choice Award (actually the Audience Award), the only official award in the category, for “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning”.
In the second award announced on Thursday night at Cannes, this time from our Directors’ Fortnight partners, French director Lila Pinel’s first solo directorial feature, Shana, won the Cou de Coeur des Auteurs from French copyright collection organization SACD.
Bernard, the BAFTA-nominated writer and director of award-winning British independent films such as The Selfish Giant, Dark River, and Ali & Eva, is also the BAFTA-nominated writer/director, and his fifth feature film is an adaptation by Die My Love and Hunger screenwriter Enda Walsh, based on the novel of the same name by Kieran Goddard. The film focuses on five childhood friends living in Birmingham. Patrick, Shiv, Ryan, Oli, and Connor skipped school together to play together and dream of the life they would one day have.
But now, at the age of 30, they face divergent destinies, and the future for most of them is even more limited. The film features a notable ensemble cast, led by Anthony Boyle (Say Nothing), Joe Cole (Gangs of London), Jay Ricargo (Steve), Darryl McCormack (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande), and Laura Petticrew (Say Nothing, She Said).
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, which had its world premiere at Cannes on May 20, received praise for its poignancy and strong acting.
The film had already created a buzz in the market when French sales company Charade acquired global sales rights for this year’s European Sales Market (EFM). Bernard already won the European Cinemas Label Award in 2013 for The Selfish Giant.
“Shana,” an adaptation of Pinel’s own short story, stars Eva Ort as the title character. Her own greatest enemy, a conflicted petty drug peddler and toxic boyfriend, is about to be released from prison. Hall’s performance heralds a whirlwind rise to stardom, and the film as a whole has been praised for its believable portrayal of the pressures affecting a firebrand in his mid-twenties.
Pick’s co-stars include Noemi Lvovsky, Ines Ghelib, Anais Mona, Bettina de Van, Geneviève Krief and Sekouba Doucouré. The film is being produced by Ecce Films and CG Cinema, the latter of which also produced Cannes competition favorite Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur. Losange Films will handle international sales.
