05/10/2015 - Tom Geens’ feature has scored a hat trick, winning Best Film, Best Screenplay and the Audience Award; Departure snagged a double Special Mention

Couple in a Hole by Tom Geens

Co-produced by the United Kingdom, Belgium and France, Couple in a Hole [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tom Geens
film profile] by Tom Geens clearly came out on top of the list of winners at the 26th Dinard British Film Festival. The film went home with the top prize, the Hitchcock d'Or 2015, which was handed out by the jury chaired by Jean Rochefort, and including such names as Natalie Dormer, Virginie Efira, Pierre Salvadori, Noah Taylor, Bertrand Faivre and Helena Mackenzie. This same jury also decided to give the movie the Hitchcock for Best Screenplay (written by the director). Its fine double win was then topped off by the Audience Award.

Presented at Toronto in the City to City London section, Couple in a Hole is the second feature by Tom Geens (Belgian-born but living in England), who turned heads at Karlovy Vary in 2009 with Liar. Starring Paul Higgins, Kate Dickie, Jérôme Kircher and Corinne Masiero, the story unfolds somewhere in France… Two British people are living like wild beasts in a hole they have dug straight into the earth in a forest. Less than a year beforehand, they lost everything in a terrible fire. Having been in a state of shock since that dramatic event, the couple shut themselves away, making a clean break from society, until the moment when a farmer tries to come to their aid… Produced by British outfits 011 Productions (Zorana Piggott – also in charge of the movie’s international sales) and ​The Chicken Factory, Couple in a Hole was co-produced by A Private View on the Belgian side and by ​Les Enragés for France. The distribution rights for the UK were acquired by Verve Pictures. 

The jury of the 2015 Dinard Festival gave out two Special Mentions to the British-French co-production Departure [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Andrew Steggall (selected for the upcoming BFI London Film Festival, in the Love Strand section) and to its actors Juliet Stevenson, Alex Lawther and Phenix Brossard. Lastly, the awards list is rounded off by the Hitchcock for Best Short Film bestowed upon After the End by Sam Southward. Also of note are the “Coup de Coeur” (“Love at First Sight”) Hitchcock Award that was handed by the La Règle du Jeu exhibitors’ association to Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Andrew Haigh
film profile] (the winner of both Acting Awards at Berlin – set to be released in France on 27 January 2016) and the Honorary Hitchcock for the famous novelist and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi.

(Translated from French)