‘Amazing’ is not enough to describe nomination, England says
CKOI morning man Yan England found out live on-air Thursday morning that he’d landed an Oscar nomination.
The actor, writer-director and radio personality was in the Place Bonaventure studios of the francophone FM radio station when he learned from his mother that the second short film that he has directed, Henry, was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best short live-action film. His mother, father and girlfriend were all there in the hopes of being able to share this magic moment with England.
“It was an amazing morning,” said England, on the phone later. “And ‘amazing’ is not enough. I don’t know if there is a word that’s bigger than that. If you can find it, let me know. I will use it.”
It was his mother, in tears, who announced to him that he’d made the final five.
“I felt this mix of emotions,” England said. “You cry, you yell, you don’t know what to say, you’re speechless. It was beautiful.”
England is a well-known local actor who currently appears in the top-rated series Trauma and was also in the popular series Yamaska.
Of course, most of the attention in Montreal on Thursday was focused on Montreal writer-director Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle, which became the third consecutive Quebec film to garner a nomination in the foreign-language category. But there are actually two films in the liveaction short category with Montreal connections. The other one is Buzkashi Boys, an Afghanistan-shot film about two boys who dream of playing buzkashi, in which horseback riders compete for a headless goat. It is produced by Ariel Nasr, a Halifax native of Afghan descent who moved to Montreal last year. The 28-minute film — directed by Philadelphia-raised, Kabulbased filmmaker Sam French — played the Montreal World Film Festival last summer. “I’m thrilled and humbled,” Nasr said.
He is also pumped that three filmmakers from his new hometown are going to the Oscars. “It’s unbelievable,” Nasr said. “I think I moved to the right place.”
Henry is a 21-minute French-language film, which England financed out of his own pocket, about an elderly man suffering from Alzheimer’s. Gérard Poirier plays an 84-year-old pianist, Henry, and Louise Laprade portrays his wife, Maria. The film was inspired by England’s grandfather, who died at the age of 96 five years ago. The old man began to lose his memory in his early 90s.
“My grandfather was an amazing man,” England said. “He lived such a huge life. He was part of the intelligence services in the British army during the Second World War, then he lived in Italy, became a film producer, met my grandmother and then he lost everything and had to move here to Canada with his family to start from scratch.
“He was a man who could remember every single detail. When he turned 92, I was sitting at a café with him and my mom, and he looked at us with a different look in his eyes, and started to get really anxious, and he asked us the question: ‘Have I been a good man?’
“That shook me. How could a man who could remember everything not remember anything about his life? I quoted that literally, word for word, in the film and I wanted to explore the world of dementia and Alzheimer’s.”