NI 'Stars' At Irish Film & TV Awards

While 'The Tudors’, ‘Kings’ and ‘Garage’ were the big winners at the Irish Film & Television Awards in Dublin’s Gaiety on Sunday, local Northern Ireland talent was stage front too.

BBC Newsline won the Best News Award for its programme on NI devolution and the Best Current Affairs award went to ‘Prime Time Investigates’ for the programme ‘Not Seen, Not Heard’.

World-renowned Armagh cinematographer Seamus McGarvey was also recognised for his work on the Oscar-nominated love story ‘Atonement’, whose young Irish star, Saoirse Ronan, won the Rising Star Award and Best Supporting Actress.

However, it was the blue blood drama The Tudors - which focuses on the turbulent early years of King Henry VIII’s reign as King of England - that was named Best Drama Series/Soap and also dominated the TV acting and technical categories.

Star of the series, Jonathan Rhys Meyers won Best Actor in a Television Series while his co-stars, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Nick Dunning, were named Best Supporting Actress and Actor in Television awards respectively.

In the technical categories, The Tudors won Best Costume (Joan Bergin), Best Hair and Make-Up (Jennifer Hegarty, Dee Corcoran) and Best Production Design (Tom Conroy) awards.

Internationally acclaimed Irish language movie, Kings, won five awards. The films star Brendan Conroy was named Best Supporting Actor in Film and the drama also won the Special Irish Language Award.

In the technical section, Kings also won awards for Best Editing (Dermot Diskin), Best Sound (Ken Galvin, Ronan Hill, Dominic Weaver) and Best Original Score (Pol Brennan).

Kings tells the story of a group of men from Connemara who emigrated from Ireland to London in the late seventies. One of the group dies and they are forced to confront the reality that the death could have been suicide and face up to the truth.

Garage, which was part financed by RTE was named Best Film and its star, Pat Shortt, was named Best Actor in a Lead Role. Director Lenny Abrahamson won the Best Director Film Award and writer Mark O’Halloran, won the Best Script for Film Award.

‘The Lives of Others’ was named Best International Film with Daniel-Day Lewis winning Best International Actor for his performance in ‘There Will Be Blood’.

Hilary Swank was awarded Best International Actress for ‘PS I Love You’, the bittersweet drama by Cecilia Ahern.

Mel Gibson received the Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema award.

(DS)(BMcC)