DUBLIN FILM CRITICS CIRCLE: I, DANIEL BLAKE WINS BEST FILM OF 2016

You can rely on the Irish! Ken Loach's Cannes Palme d'Or winner I, Daniel Blake is the Dublin Film Critics Circle's favourite film of the year. If you're going to think outside the box, and I recommend it wholeheartedly, this is the kind of thinking you ought to be doing. Nice work, DFCC!

Best Film

1. I, Daniel Blake

2. Arrival

3. Hell or High Water

4. Spotlight

5. Anomalisa

6. Captain Fantastic

=  Paterson

=  The Revenant

=  Room

=  Son of Saul

=  Train to Busan

=  The Witch

Best Director

1. Denis Villeneuve (Arrival)

2. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (The Revenant)

3. Ken Loach (I, Daniel Blake)

4. Lenny Abrahamson (Room)

5. Tom Ford (Nocturnal Animals)

=  Lucile Hadzihalilovic (Evolution)

Best Actress

1. Amy Adams (Arrival)

2. Hayley Squires (I, Daniel Blake)

3. Brie Larson (Room)

4. Kate Beckinsale (Love & Friendship)

=  Seana Kerslake (A Date for Mad Mary)

6. Isabelle Huppert (Things to Come)

Best Actor

1. Dave Johns (I, Daniel Blake)

2. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)

3. Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water)

=  Adam Driver (Paterson)

5. Rohrig Geza (Son of Saul)

=  Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight)

7. Vincent Lindon (The Measure of a Man)

=  Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic)

Best Screenplay

1. Eric Heisserer (Arrival)

2. Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (Spotlight)

3. Taylor Sheridan (Hell or High Water)

4. Whit Stillman (Love & Friendship)

5. Emma Donoghue (Room)

=  Matt Ross (Captain Fantastic)

=  S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk)

Best Cinematography

1. Seamus McGarvey (Nocturnal Animals)

2. Emmanuel Lubezki (The Revenant)

3. Bradford Young (Arrival)

4. Jarin Blaschke (The Witch)

5. Natasha Braier (The Neon Demon)

=  Erdely Matyas (Son of Saul)

Best Documentary

1. Mattress Men

=  Weiner

3. 66 Days: Bobby Sands

4. Life, Animated

5. Atlantic

=  The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years

=  Magnus

8. Crash and Burn

Best Irish Film

1. A Date for Mad Mary

2. Sing Street

3. Room

4. Viva

=  The Young Offenders

6. Mammal

=  The Survivalist

Best International Breakthrough

Hayley Squires

Best Irish Breakthrough

Seana Kerslake

REVIEW - I, DANIEL BLAKE (KEN LOACH)

Ken Loach battles on with yet another film that might just have been that bit more persuasive, and less expensive, as a simple screed or local political campaign. Alas, he's tried that, and anyway, I, Daniel Blake is neither of those, at least not technically. It's a film, and in many ways it is a very fine one - ways principally due to its political persuasiveness. Corners cut and shortcuts taken in the name of dramatic licence accepted, the heart of this film - and it is a burgeoning, brimful, heavy heart - bears an important message, existing only to be communicated with all the clarity and sympathy of which Loach and Paul Laverty are capable. It's an angry, accusatory work, beneath and beyond the generous humour, typically unafraid to point fingers and place blame. Neither director nor screenwriter are interested any longer in humanizing their targets, unambiguously railing against the exploitation and desecration of public services established to maintain some modicum of compassion in the state system. If I, Daniel Blake is a film destined to enrage or annoy conservatives, that's entirely and appropriately intentional, since Laverty has here drawn a line through the right-wing elitist spin, directly connecting cause and consequence. The final feeling with which one is left upon watching I, Daniel Blake is despair, though perhaps a small part of that is down to the horrible big missteps taken en route to eliciting it. The grip on pacing and continuity is slack at best, the artistic design is utterly average (has Robbie Ryan ever crafted such dull images?) and there's a crass, sex-phobic plot turn in the third act. All unnecessary errors that, indeed, might have been avoided had I, Daniel Blake been left to the realm of political activism alone. But as politically activist cinema goes, it's a powerful, worthy work all the same.

LOCARNO 2016: PROGRAMME ANNOUNCED

The lineup has been revealed for the 2016 edition of the Locarno Film Festival. The Swiss fest is an essential stop on the film calendar for cinephiles, showcasing a selection of titles on the more obscure, innovative end of the summer festival spectrum. This year will host 17 premieres competing for the top prize, the Golden Leopard, in the Concorzo Internazionale, with gala screenings for films such as Jason Bourne, The Girl with All the Gifts and Ken Loach's Palme d'Or winner I, Daniel Blake. Locarno 2016 runs from the 3rd to the 13th of August; Arturo Ripstein chairs the Concorso Internazionale jury, and Dario Argento the Concorso Cineasti del Presente jury. For the full lineup, which features details on the programmes for all 12 of the festival's strands, check out its official website.

Concorso Internazionale

Al Ma' wal Khodra wal Wajh el Hassan (Yousry Nasrallah)

Bangkok Nites (Tomita Katsuya)

Correspondencias (Rita Azevedo Gomes)

Dao Khanong (Anocha Suwichakornpong)

The Dreamlike Path (Angela Schanelec)

Godless (Ralitza Petrova)

Hermia & Helena (Matias Pineiro)

The Idea of a Lake (Milagros Mumenthaler)

Jeunesse (Julien Samani)

Maria (Michael Koch)

Mister Universo (Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel)

The Ornithologist (Joao Pedro Rodrigues)

Ostatnia Rodzina (Jan P. Matuszynski)

La Prunelle de Mes Yeux (Axelle Ropert)

Scarred Hearts (Radu Jude)
Slava (Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov)

Wet Woman in the Wind (Shiota Akihito)

Piazza Grande

Cessez-le-Feu (Emmanuel Courcol)

La Ciel Attendra (Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar)

Comboio de Sal e Acucar (Licinio Azevedo)

Dans la Forest (Gilles Marchand)

The Day It Rained (Gerd Oswald)

Endless Poetry (Alejandro Jodorowsky)

The Girl with All the Gifts (Colm McCarthy)

Gotthard (Urs Egger)

I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)

Interchange (Dain Iskandar Said)

Jason Bourne (Paul Greengrass)

Mohenjo Daro (Ashutosh Gowariker)

Moka (Frederic Mermoud)

Paula (Christian Schwochow)

Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (Maria Schrader)

Teo-Neol (Kim Seong Hun)

They Call Me Trinity (Enzo Barboni)

Vincent (Christophe van Rompaey)

Concorso Cineasti del Presente

Afterlove (Stergios Paschos)

Akhdar Yabes (Mohammed Hammad)

El Auge del Humano (Eduardo Williams)

The Challenge (Yuri Ancarani)

Destruction Babies (Mariko Tetsuya)

Donald Cried (Kris Avedisian)

El Futuro Perfecto (Nele Wohlatz)

Gorge Coeur Ventre (Maud Alpi)

I Had Nowhere to Go (Douglas Gordon)

L'Indomptee (Caroline Deruas)

Istirahatlah Kata-Kata (Yosep Anggi Noen)

Manana a Esta Hora (Lina Rodriguez)

Il Nido (Klaudia Reynicke)

Pescatori di Corpi (Michele Pennetta)

Viejo Calavera (Kiro Russo)

OFFICIAL BRITISH TRAILER: I, DANIEL BLAKE

Honest and heartfelt, here arrives the UK trailer for the latest film from  the country's own Ken Loach, I, Daniel Blake. It was the surprise winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival last month, securing a second Palme for Loach, upon his swift return to filmmaking following an intended retirement two years ago. The film is released in the UK on the 21st of October; no US release date has been confirmed at time of writing.

REVIEW - VERSUS: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF KEN LOACH (LOUISE OSMOND)

An ideal accompaniment to the works of Ken Loach, in that it illustrates that which engenders them, drives them, stands responsible for their existence. An ideal starter course for the unfamiliar audience too, for the very same reasons. Neither a biopic nor a catalogue, nor even a humdrum hybrid of the two, Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach is an intelligent, incisive essay on that very subject; like the most valuable essays, it offers up new arguments and old evidence, communicates its central thematic tenets with clarity yet covers a considerable amount of detail. Though not the political statement as which any one of Loach's own films might qualify, Versus unpacks the emotional, societal and mental motivation that first developed this most essential quality of those works. A portrait of Loach which the man himself could never have conceived, Louise Osmond's film is nevertheless the perfect counterpart to his portraits of society - drawn out as they are from the minds of the types of ordinary people depicted therein, so too does their depiction here evoke a similar tone in Osmond's enquiries, and a similar response from the viewer. The film is subtly artful and overtly compassionate, and a fantastic model for documentary filmmakers in the matter of combining those two, often seemingly mutually exclusive features. Osmond deploys a casually non-linear narrative, and dwells on certain junctures, certain films in Loach's life and career for only as long as the need to explicate a certain point remains. It's a patchy portrait, then, but smartly so, since any extra breadth might have been at the expense of depth. And, for the committed cinephile, there's always the option of exploring said breadth for oneself. Versus is, as aforementioned, the ideal accompaniment to such an endeavour.

I, DANIEL BLAKE SHOCKS TO WIN A SECOND PALME D'OR FOR KEN LOACH

And, with that, the best chance in over 20 years of a woman winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival just died. Maren Ade's universally acclaimed Toni Erdmann had already won the FIPRESCI Prize and was the overwhelming favourite to win the whole shebang; a pre-ceremony rumour suggested that jury president George Miller hadn't liked the German director's comedy, however, and that it might go home empty-handed... as indeed it did. Instead, the Palme went to Ken Loach for his film I, Daniel Blake, permitting Loach to join the esteemed ranks of the few directors to have won two Palmes, after his win ten years ago for The Wind That Shakes the Barley. And there were plenty more surprises among the awards this evening, as you can see below:

Palme d'Or

I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)

Grand Prix

It's Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan)

Prix du Jury

American Honey (Andrea Arnold)

Prix de la Mise-en-Scene

Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper)

Cristian Mungiu (Graduation)

Prix d'Interpretation Feminine

Jaclyn Jose (Ma' Rosa)

Prix d'Interpretation Masculine

Shahab Hosseini (The Salesman)

Prix du Scenario

Asghar Farhadi (The Salesman)

Camera d'Or

Divines (Houda Benyamina)

Short Film Palme d'Or

Timecode (Juanjo Gimenez)

Short Film Special Mention

The Girl Who Danced with the Devil (Joao Paulo Miranda Maria)

Palme d'Honneur

Jean-Pierre Leaud

ECUMENICAL JURY SURPRISES AT CANNES 2016, SIDES WITH DOLAN

It's not the end of the world, exactly, but not that anyone would think it so, unlike Xavier Dolan: he seemed to think it might have been after critics savaged his Cannes competition entry It's Only the End of the World. It's one of the main comp's worst-reviewed titles this year, and easily its worst-reviewed to have been the subject of some considerable defence, not least by its filmmaker. But Cannes' Ecumenical Jury seems to support the Canadian Dolan, rewarding him with their first place citation for this year's whole festival. See what else they chose to recognise - some typically left-field choices from the ecumenical jury - below:

Prize of the Ecumenical Jury

It's Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan)

Special Commendations

American Honey (Andrea Arnold)

I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)

PATERSON'S NELLIE WINS PALM DOG 2016

Condogulations are in order as the most prestigious award has been handed out at Cannes. The festival's top honour, the Palm Dog, has gone to Nellie, the English bulldog who plays Marvin in Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, one of the favourites to win the Palme d'Or this year. Nellie makes history in the category, becoming the first dog to receive this award posthumously - tragically, she passed away a couple of months ago. See what the esteemed jury chose for their full slate of award winners below.

Palm Dog

Nellie (Paterson)

Jury Prize

Jacques (In Bed with Victoria)

Palm Dogmanitarian

Ken Loach (I, Daniel Blake)