Irish films scoop Torono Film Festival awards

A movie about the Omagh bomb was one of two Irish films to scoop a top prize at a major Canadian film festival.

Pete Travis’s Omagh, which deals with the Real IRA atrocity that killed 29 people in August 1998, won the Discovery Award at the Toronto Film Festival.

The movie, which starred Irish actor Gerard McSorley as Omagh bomb campaigner Michael Gallagher, received widespread critical acclaim when it was screened on RTE and Channel 4 earlier this year.

The Discovery Award was voted for by members of the international press corps attending the festival.

Belfast-born director Terry George also took a major honour in Toronto, capturing the People’s Choice award for his film Hotel Rwanda.

The movie features Ocean’s Eleven star Don Cheadle as a selfless hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, who sets up a refuge for Tutsis fleeing genocide by the Hutu militia in Rwanda in 1994.

The film also stars Nick Nolte as a powerless United Nations official and Joaquin Phoenix as a photojournalist who becomes emotionally involved with a Rwandan woman.

A total of 328 films were screened at the Toronto Film Festival, including 98 world premieres and 81 North American premieres.

A New Zealand film, In My Father’s Den, scooped the top prize, the Fipresci award.