The edgy Dublin comedy-drama Intermission has swept the boards in the nominations for the Irish Film & Television Awards, which were announced last night.
The awards, the Irish equivalent of the Oscars, will be presented at a televised ceremony in Dublin on November 1st. Irish actors and craft workers in films made at home and abroad are eligible for the awards.
Directed by Cork-born filmmaker John Crowley and scripted by Dublin writer Mark O'Rowe, Intermission received 11 nominations, including best film, director and screenplay. The most successful indigenous production in years at the Irish box-office, the modestly budgeted film has taken over €2 million on release at cinemas in the State, where it is still running at over 30 cinemas.
Spin the Bottle, a spin-off from the TV comedy series, Paths to Freedom, starring Michael McElhatton as the inept Dublin criminal known as Rats, took eight nominations, ahead of its Irish release in late November. Three films secured six nominations each: Robert Quinn's Dead Bodies, Liz Gill's Goldfish Memory and Joel Schumacher's Veronica Guerin, the biggest hit of the year to date at the Irish box-office.
The critically-acclaimed Power Pictures documentary, Chavez - Inside the Coup, filmed in Venezuela last year and seen on RTÉ and the BBC, has been nominated as best picture as well as best documentary. It is joined on the best picture shortlist by Dead Bodies, Intermission, Veronica Guerin, Conor McPherson's The Actors, and Aisling Walsh's drama of institutional clerical abuse, Song For a Raggy Boy, which opens the 48th Cork Film Festival tomorrow night.
Aidan Quinn, who stars in Walsh's film, is on the shortlist for best film actor along with Andrew Scott (Dead Bodies), Michael McElhatton (Spin the Bottle), Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later) and Colin Farrell for the US action movie, SWAT.
The three actresses who made their mark in The Commitments in 1991 are all nominated for best film actress - Bronagh Gallagher for Spin the Bottle, Maria Doyle Kennedy for Mystics, and Angeline Ball, who plays Molly Bloom in the Ulysses adaptation, bl,.m. Nominated in the same category are Flora Montgomery (Goldfish Memory) and Natasha McElhone (Solaris).
Multiple nominees include Colin Farrell, who is also on the best supporting actor shortlist for Intermission; Angeline Ball, nominated as best TV actress for Any Time Now; and RTÉ's Prime Time, with three nominations.