THE GUARD Scoops Audience Award at Sarajevo Film Festival
Following on from its recent success at the Irish box office, there was further good news for Irish comedy THE GUARD this weekend as it scooped the Audience Award at the 17th Sarajevo Film Festival obtaining the highest score ever recorded at the festival.
The Sarajevo Film Festival is the premier and largest film festival in the Balkans. One of the largest festivals in Europe, it aims to present important and innovative films of high artistic value made throughout the world. It was attended by over 100,000 people throughout the duration including Angelina Jolie who was presented with the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award.
Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh THE GUARD stars Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges, Harry Potter, The General), Don Cheadle (Iron Man 2, Crash, Hotel Rwanda), as an unorthodox Irish policeman who joins forces with a straitlaced FBI agent, played by Don Cheadle, to take on an international drug-smuggling gang. The film has grossed over two million euro at the Irish box office, making it one of the most successful Irish films in recent years and ensuring it as a contender for one of the biggest film hits of the summer.
THE GUARD is an Irish/UK co-production, financed by Bord Scannán na hÉireann /the Irish Film Board and Section 481 as well as International Financiers. It's produced by Chris Clark and Flora Fernandez Marengo for Reprisal Films and Ed Guiney (Garage) and Andrew Lowe (The Wind that Shakes the Barley) for Element Pictures. The film also stars Fionnuala Flanagan (Lost, Transamerica), Liam Cunningham (Hunger, The Wind that Shakes the Barley) and Mark Strong (Kick Ass, Sherlock Holmes).
Irish animator David O'Reilly had his short film The External World also selected for screening at the Sarajevo festival while previous Irish winners include Ken Wardop's The Herd, recipient of the Prix UIP award, while Juanita Wilson (The Door, As If I Am Not There) was awarded the prestigious Katrin Cartlidge foundation bursary "a new creative voice in cinema, showing the
independence, singularity and integrity of spirit that the actress exemplified in her own lifetime."
The Sarajevo Film Festival took place from the 22nd-30th July.