The 10th edition of the Iris Prize took place in Cardiff last week, and this milestone event saw an overall winner to match. The award ceremony of this prestigious LGBT short film festival lit up the Park Inn Hotel on Sun 16 Oct, thanks in no small part to its host, Capital FM’s Matt Lissack. Balcony, a 17-minute film directed by Toby Fell-Holden, scooped the international Iris Prize – making Fell-Holden the first British director to do so – as well as the Best British Award. The £30,000 prize will fund a short film, directed by Fell-Holden and produced in Wales under the Iris banner.
Balcony, which was first shown in October 2015, concerns a racially tense neighbourhood and a romance between a local girl and an immigrant who’s recently moved to the area. The various issues that result – intersections of class, race, gender and sexuality – are examined by Fell-Holden in a manner which led Iris Prize jury chair Cheryl Dunye to comment, “We felt that the director crafted a powerful film where not a single moment of its 17 minutes was wasted. The lead performance by Charlotte Beaumont was particularly outstanding as she took us on an internal transformation that left us speechless.”
Achieving special commendation in the main category were Thanks For Dancing (Takk For Turen), a Norwegian production, and Sunday Lunch (Le Repas Dominical), from France.
In the remaining categories, Best Feature Film was awarded to Real Boy, directed by Shaleece Haas, who will pick up a £1,000 prize for her troubles. The Best Performance Award was shared between two actors from the same film: Downriver, an Australian picture whose cast included winners Tom Green and Kerry Fox (its director, Grant Scicluna, was the overall Iris winner in 2012). And the Youth Award went to American director Andrew Keenan-Bolger for his movie Sign, voted by a panel of south Wales school pupils aged between 12 and 18.
With another enlightening, inspirational and high-octane Iris Prize done and dusted, the dates are already set for Iris number 11: Tue 10-Sun 15 Oct 2017. Mark your calendars accordingly.
words NOEL GARDNER
Info: www.irisprize.org