Farming romance wins film festival’s biggest honour
God’s Own Country opened the event’s 70th anniversary year
A love story about two Yorkshire sheep farmers has won the most coveted prize at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
First-time director Francis Lee’s gay romance God’s Own Country was today named winner of the prestigious Michael Powell Award.
The film, which been dubbed “Britain’s Brokeback Mountain”, was chosen to open the event in its 70th anniversary year after wowing critics at the Berlin and Sundance festivals earlier this year.
Shane Meadows, Michael Winterbottom, Antonia Bird, Derek Jarman and David Mackenzie are among the previous winners of the award since it was instigated in 1990.
Lee, 47, wrote God’s Own Country while he was working in a scrapyard after quitting acting.
He worked intensively with his two lead actors for three months before filming began to develop their characters, including sending them out to work on real-life Yorkshire farms for two weeks.
The judges for this year’s Michael Powell Award described the winnner as “a film with a singularity of storytelling and consistency of vision.”
They added: “Assured direction with raw and endearing performances result in a film that has an authenticity that is both tender and brutal, a juxtaposition of landscape and emotion, which explores the question of what it means to be a man.”
The EIFF award for best performance in a British feature film was awarded jointly to actresses Emily Beecham for her role in Daphne, in which she plays a young women who saves the life of a shopkeeper stabbed in a robbery attempt, and former Coronation Street star Anne Reid for her roles in psychological thriller Kaleidoscope and Romans, which explores the impact of child abuse.
God’s Own Country depicts the unfolding relationship between a young farmer in the Yorkshire Pennines and a Romanian migrant worker.
Lastweekleepraisedorganisers of the Edinburgh event for choosing a film with a same-sex relationship at its heart to open the festival.
Lee said: “I am thrilled with this honour for God’s Own Country, especially when you consider the British films that have won before.
“After premiering at Sundance and Berlin it has been wonderful to see how the film has created a real resonance with people. That is why the Michael Powell Award feels so brilliant.”
In his review of God’s Own Country, The Scotsman film critic Alistair Harkness said: “It’s a movie that has the unmistakable ring of truth to it – both in its unsentimental depiction of rural life and its matter-of-fact approach to sexuality.
“The film’s positive depiction of people from different cultures forging a better life together now feels more like a lament for everything Britain has thrown away in its nostalgic pursuit of a past that never was. Whether intentionally or not, Lee has made the first great film of the Brexit era.”
Richard E Grant, Ewen Bremner, Kevin Bacon, Stanley Tucci, Danny Huston and Sheila Hancock have been among the stars appearing at the ten-day festival. The event will draw to a close tomorrow with the world premiere of Morrissey biopic England Is Mine, which will see Bordersborn actor Jack Lowden playing the indie music figurehead during his teenage years.
bferguson@scotsman.com