‘YOU CAN COUNT ON ME’ TAKES TOP PRIZE AT RLFF

THE CLOSING gala of the Regus London Film Festival (RLFF) saw Kenneth Lonergan win the British Film Institute’s Sutherland Trophy for his feature 'You Can Count On Me’.
Charles McDonald, of film publicists McDonald & Rutter, received the award on behalf of Lonergan at the closing night gala at the Odeon Leicester Square. The writer and director is currently in Rome working on Martin Scorsese's ‘The Gangs of New York’.
‘Sexy Beast’ by new British director Jonathan Glazer was a close runner-up in second place and Alejanro Springall's promising feature, ‘Santitos’, came in third.
Established in 1958, the Sutherland Trophy is presented to the maker of the most original and imaginative first feature film screened during the festival.
Sutherland panel chair and festival director, Adrian Wootton, said: “The jury found it tremendously difficult to choose a winner as the shortlist was of an exceptionally high standard this year. However, there was a unanimous feeling that You Can Count On Me was superbly directed, written and performed and it stood out as the strongest and most powerful film. It is a mesmerising achievement with a real poetic vision.”
Several other awards were handed out before the closing gala screening of ‘Born Romantic’. Jean-Pierre Sinapi won the Satyajit Ray Foundation award for ‘Uneasy Riders’. Sinapi will now be invited to India for a gala screening at the Kerala Film Festival in Trivandrum. Sinapi will receive the Satyajit Ray trophy at a special screening in London in March next year, prior to travelling to the Kerala Festival.
‘Uneasy Riders’ also scooped the FIPRESCI International Critics Award presented to the director of the best first or second feature in the festival.
Earlier this week Toby MacDonald was presented with the Turner Classic Movies Classic Shorts award for ‘Je T'Aime John Wayne’. (CMcL)