“Rust and Bone,” Jacques Audiard’s soaring story of love, loss and killer whales, was named best picture at the London Film Festival on Saturday.
The movie is a thriller-cum-melodrama about the unlikely relationship between a bare-knuckle boxer (Matthias Schoenaerts) and a whale trainer, played by Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard, who suffers a tragic workplace accident.
The president of the award jury, British playwright David Hare, praised it as “a film full of heart, violence and love.”
French filmmaker Audiard won the same award at the London festival in 2009 for his prison drama “A Prophet.”
American director Benh Zeitlin took the best debut feature prize with his atmospheric bayou saga “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Juror Hannah McGill praised the “daringly vast, richly detailed” film, which has won wide praise since its Sundance Film Festival debut earlier this year.
The trophy for best British newcomer went to Sally El Hosaini for “My Brother the Devil,” the story of British-Egyptian brothers struggling with conflicting loyalties and identities in modern-day London. The best documentary prize went to Alex Gibney’s “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” an investigation of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic church.
Director Tim Burton and actress Helena Bonham Carter — real-life partners as well as creative collaborators — received career honors known as British Film Institute Fellowships during an awards ceremony at London’s Banqueting House.
Founded in 1957 to show the best of the world’s cinema to a British audience, the London festival has in recent years tried to carve out a place on the international movie calendar with bigger pictures, more glittering stars and more high-profile awards.
Highlights of the 12-day festival included Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage drama “Argo,” Michael Haneke’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Amour,” Rolling Stones documentary “Crossfire Hurricane” and Roger Michell’s “Hyde Park on Hudson,” a comedy-drama with Bill Murray as U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Utah Leaders and Locals Rally To Keep Sundance Film Festival In The State
With the 2025 Sundance Film Festival underway, Utah leaders, locals and longtime attendees are making a final push — one that could include paying millions of dollars — to keep the world-renowned film festival as its directors consider uprooting.
Thousands of festivalgoers affixed bright yellow stickers to their winter coats that read "Keep Sundance in Utah" in a last-ditch effort to convince festival leadership and state officials to keep it in Park City, its home of 41 years.
Gov. Spencer Cox said previously that Utah would not throw as much money at the festival as other states hoping to lure it away. Now his office is urging the Legislature to carve out $3 million for Sundance in the state budget, weeks before the independent film festival is expected to pick a home for the next decade.
It could retain a small presence in picturesque Park City and center itself in nearby Salt Lake City, or move to another finalist — Cincinnati, Ohio, or Boulder, Colorado — beginning in 2027.
"Sundance is Utah, and Utah is Sundance. You can't really separate those two," Cox said. "This is your home, and we desperately hope it will be your home forever."
Last year's festival generated about $132 million for the state of Utah, according to Sundance's 2024 economic impact report.
Festival Director Eugene Hernandez told reporters last week that they had not made a final decision. An announcement is expected this year by early spring.
Colorado is trying to further sweeten its offer. The state is considering legislation giving up to $34 million in tax incentives to film festivals like Sundance through 2036 — on top of the $1.5 million in funds already approved to lure the Utah festival to its neighboring... Read More