Cannes Directors’ Fortnight: Clio Barnard’s ‘I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning’ Wins People’s Choice Audience Award

Cannes Directors’ Fortnight has served some compensation for a scant presence of U.K. filmmakers in major sections at those year’s festival, awarding the highest profile among them, Clio Barnard, the section’s only official prize: the Directors’ Fortnight People Choice Award – an effective Audience Award – for “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning.”

In a second award announced Thursday Cannes evening, this time from a Directors’ Fortnight partner, “Shana,” the first feature as a solo director from France’s Lila Pinell, scored the Coup de Cœur des Auteurs prize, from France’s rights collection society SACD.

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A BAFTA-nominated writer-director behind multi-prized British indie films such as “The Selfish Giant,” “Dark River” and “Ali & Ava,” Barnard’s fifth feature is adapted by “Die My Love” and “Hunger” writer Enda Walsh from Keiran Goddard’s eponymous novel. It turns on five childhood friends in Birmingham: Patrick, Shiv, Rian, Oli, and Conor played together, who skipped school together and dreamt of the lives they would have one day. 

Now they’re thirty, however, and they face divided destines and most of them ever more limited futures. The film features a notable ensemble cast, led by Anthony Boyle (“Say Nothing”), Joe Cole (“Gangs of London”), Jay Lycurgo (“Steve”), Daryl McCormack (“Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”) and Lola Petticrew (“Say Nothing,” “She Said”).  

World premiering May 20 at Cannes, “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning” has drawn praise for its poignancy and the strength of its performances. 

The film already sparked market buzz when discriminating French sales company Charades took world sales rights in the run-up to this year’s European Sales Market (EFM). Barnard already won the Europa Cinemas Label award for “The Selfish Giant” in 2013.  

Adapting Pinell’s own short, “Shana” has Eva Huault play the titular character, a conflictive petty drug pedlar whose her own worst enemy with a toxic boyfriend soon set to leave jail. Hault’s performance has been heralded as a barnstorming star-making turn, while the film as a whole has been hailed for its authenticity in its portrayal of the pressures exerting influence on a mid-twenties firebrand.

Pic co-stars Noémie Lvovsky, Inès Gherib, Anaïs Monah,  Bettina De Van, Geneviève Krief and Sékouba Doucouré.  It is produced by Ecce Films and CG Cinema, the latter also behind Cannes competition favorite “Minotaur” by Andrey Zvyagintsev. Losange Films handles international sales.