Brits Win Awards At Cannes

Peter Mullan won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance in Ken Loach's new film, My Name Is Joe. The film itself won nothing, despite being tipped for the Palme d'Or. The Scottish actor, who has only been acting for eight years and has usually been restricted to cameo roles in such films as Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, paid credit to Loach, without whom he said he would not have been acting. My Name is Joerevolves around the relationship between Mullan, playing a reformed alcoholic manager of an amateur football team in Glasgow, and a health worker. Mullan said that he hoped the award would bring recognition for the movie. "The biggest reward I can think of now for My Name is Joe is that it gets a proper release and the kind of advertising that Trainspotting got." Mullan has also directed films, and had his own directorial debut in the festival, but said that he wasn't tempted to chip in with advice when Loach was behind the camera. "If you are working with Ken Loach, you don't try to tell him how to capture a particular scene if you want to keep your teeth." Meanwhile, director John Boorman picked up the Best Director award for his new release, The General, about the Irish criminal Martin Cahill. The film had been tipped to do well because Martin Scorsese, the jury president, was interested in the subject matter. Boorman, who's lived in Ireland for 28 years, said, "This week, the Irish nation voted for peace and we're all thrilled about that. I dedicate this to the Irish people." David Lodge also picked up an award for his movie, Horseshoe - about a strange visit to the dentist, based on a poem by Charles Bukowski. It shared the Grand Jury Prize for Short Films with Gasman, by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay. Her film was a story of two children's reaction to their father's secret. For full details about the other awards, along with extracts from our Cannes Diary, see our Empire in Cannes feature.