IFTAs Success Celebrated

The winners of the 8th Annual Irish Film & Television Awards (IFTA) were announced at a gala ceremony held at Dublin's Convention Centre at the weekend.

Áine Moriarty Chief Executive of the Irish Film & Television Academy said: "In what has been a wonderful night of celebration for the Irish film and television industry, the Academy has honoured the year's finest achievements from Irish directors, writers, actors, filmmakers and television productions.

"Our deepest congratulations go to all of this year's nominees and winners."

Bosnian war drama As If I Am Not There, received three Awards including the IFTA for Best Film, Director and Script for the film’s debut writer/director Juanita Wilson. In television drama, the fourth and final series of The Tudors was named Best Drama Series / Soap which followed awards for the series’ craft team in Costume Design (Joan Bergin) and Make-Up and Hair. Live Aid biopic When Harvey Met Bob received the IFTA for Single Drama/ Drama Serial and its star Domhnall Gleeson was announced the winner of the Rising Star Award and Lead Actor Television.

Well-known faces featured amongst the winners of the acting categories alongside a host of exciting young Irish talent. Receiving their first IFTA Awards, Martin McCann was named the winner in the Lead Actor Film category for his performance in Swansong – Story of Occi Byrne, whilst Rewind actress Amy Hubeman received the Lead Actress IFTA.

Pierce Brosnan and Saoirse Ronan both won Awards for their Supporting roles in the international features The Ghost and The Way Back respectively, whilst Stephen Rea and Ruth McCabe received IFTAs for their performances in the television drama Single Handed.

Cinematographer PJ Dillon and production designer Ray Ball won Awards for their work on Ian Power’s The Runway, with television drama The Silence winning IFTAs for its director Dearbhla Walsh and series’ sound team.

Love/Hate writer Stuart Carolan received the IFTA for Writer Television with Na Cloigne’s Ray Harman winning the composing award. Editor Emer Reynolds won her third career IFTA Award for her work on the feature film My Brothers.

Factual category winners included Spotlight’s The Iris Robinson Investigation for Current Affairs with Freefall: The Night the Banks Failed and Voices From the Grave winning the Documentary and Documentary Series awards respectively. Operation Transformation received the IFTA for Factual programme and The Pipe won the George Morrison Feature Documentary Award.

Also in the television genre categories Entertainment series Your Bad Self, Sports documentary In Sunshine or in Shadow and children's/youth series Big City Park received honours at IFTA 2011.

The Philips Short Film Award was won by Small Change with 1916 Seachtar na Cásca winning the IFTA for Special Irish Language. Finally, the IFTA for Animation was awarded to David O'Reilly’s The External World.

In the international categories David Fincher's The Social Network won the IFTA for International Film with its star Jesse Eisenberg winning for International Actor. Annette Bening received the International Actress award for her performance in The Kids Are All Right.

Other highlights of the evening saw producer Morgan O'Sullivan (The Tudors, Camelot, PS I Love You, Braveheart) receive the Outstanding Contribution to Industry award. Actresses Joely Richardson, Kim Cattrall and singer Joss Stone joined the celebrations in Dublin to pay tribute to Morgan's career in the Irish film and television industry.

The RTÉ Guide Best TV Moment of 2010 was also revealed at the IFTA ceremony, The Republic of Telly's premiere of The Rubber Bandits' Horse Oustide was voted the winner in this People's Choice category.

See: IFTAs Awarded In Dublin

(BMcC)