‘Rust and Bone’ named best picture at London fest

LONDON: Rust and Bone, Jacques Audiard’s soaring story of love, loss and killer whales, was named best picture at the London Film Festival.

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.

On Saturday, 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 A Prophet.

American director Benh Zeitlin took the best debut feature prize with his atmospheric bayou saga Beasts of the Southern Wild.

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 and creative collaborators – received career honours 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. — AP