Kieron J. Walsh's Skintown took the £50,000 Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence at the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival on August 20, the closing night of the annual UK festival.
Set in Enniskillen, the County Fermanagh town locals call Skintown, the film follows two teenage friends who discover ecstasy and plan to sell it at a rave club frequented by paramilitaries. The story unfolds over a single night in 1994. Jack Rowan plays Vinny, Chris Walley plays Jonty, and Jamie-Lee O'Donnell rounds out the central cast. The screenplay was adapted by Ciaran McMenamin from his own novel. McMenamin, an Enniskillen native, drew directly on his youth during The Troubles.
Walsh, a Dublin-based filmmaker whose previous feature was When Brendan Met Trudy (2000), spent nearly a decade developing the project. The film was completed just two days before the festival opened. Walsh told Eye for Film: "I cannot think of a better Festival for the film than in Edinburgh because there are lots of common points between Ireland and Scotland. The sectarianism, the flute bands and the violence." On rave culture as an unexpected site of unity between communities: "It was one of the first places that Catholics and Protestants would go, mingle, and take ecstasy. And then danced together and nobody cared where they were from."
The Sean Connery Prize is audience-voted and funded by the Connery Foundation. Prize money is designated for future projects. In the short film category, Sindha Agha's Grief Room won the £15,000 Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence.