Carmel Winter's Debut Feature Snaps up Audience Award at Uruguayan Film Festival
SNAP, the psychological drama written and directed by Carmel Winters, beat off stiff competition from several hundred features to pick up the Audience Award at the Uruguayan International Film Festival which took place from the 18th-30th April.
Starring Aisling O'Sullivan (The Clinic), Eileen Walsh (Eden), the late Mick Lally (The Secret of Kells), and newcomer Stephen Moran, this carefully constructed film depicts three generations of a family, all in denial about events in which they were undeniably implicated. Their journeys towards confrontation with the truth and with their own motives reveal the humanity behind seemingly inhuman actions.
Since premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York last year, SNAP has scooped a number of awards such as the Variety's Critic's Choice Award at the Karlovary International Film Festival and the Best Irish Film and Best Irish Director awards at the Dublin Critic Circle Awards earlier this year. It also received the runner up prize for Best Irish Feature at the 2010 Galway Film Fleadh.
The film has been winning positive reviews since it was released in Irish cinemas last month with Variety magazine saying "A fractured narrative and some equally fractured characters make "Snap" an engrossing, bitter and even bittersweet journey into crime, remorse, dysfunction, abuse and nervy, audacious filmmaking."
Aisling O'Sullivan's performance has been described as "electric", while the film has been describted as "another top notch movie from an Irish filmmaker making their debut.... marvellous stuff" by Entertainment.ie
Produced by Martina Niland and Samson Films (Eden, Once) SNAP was funded by BSÉ/IFB and Screen Scene.
SNAP was in great company at the South American festival as there was a large number of award-winning films screened throughout the two weeks including Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Sylvain Chomet's Academy Award nominated The Illusionist and Charles Ferguson's Inside Job, the Academy Award winner for Best Feature Documentary.
Other Irish projects selected for the festival were Margaret Corkery's EAMON and Ian Power's THE RUNWAY.
More about Uruguayan International Film Festival
The festival, which took place in Montevideo, Uruguay from the 18th-30th April, aims to create and hold interest in the cinema by introducing worthwhile films to a huge audience, making a positive contribution to the art forms of film and video, and stimulating intelligent film-viewing among the general public. It present films of merit which might not otherwise be shown in this region, to gain attention and publicity for the films shown and to assist in their wider distribution in this region. It is also a frame for meetings and discussions of regional projects of interest and to promote better understanding among people and nations through the film medium.