Palm Springs International Film Awards presents Sarah Polley with Director of Year Honor

PALM SPRINGS – The Palm Springs International Film Awards has announced that Sarah Polley is the recipient of the Director of the Year Award, for Women Talking. The Film Awards will take place in-person on Jan. 5, 2023, at the Palm Springs Convention Center, with the festival running through Jan. 16, 2023.

Film Awards Begin Announcing Honorees

Colin Farrell (photo courtesy of Matt Easton)

Earlier this week, The Palm Springs International Film Awards announced that Colin Farrell is the recipient of the Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actor for his performance in The Banshees of Inisherin.

“Colin Farrell reunites with Brendan Gleeson and director Martin McDonagh in the masterful comedy The Banshees of Inisherin. Farrell gives a memorable performance as Pádraic a sweet-souled Irish farmer trying to save his lifelong friendship,” said Festival Chairman Harold Matzner. “For this career best performance, we are honored to present the Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actor to Colin Farrell.”

“Sarah Polley continues her outstanding work as a writer and director in her latest film Women Talking. She brings together a stellar cast in her adaptation of the Miriam Toews book, taking us on a cinematic journey filled with raw emotions and performances,” said Matzner. “It is our honor to present Sarah Polley with the Director of the Year Award.”

Past recipients of the Director of the Year Award include Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog), Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Babel, Birdman), Steve Mc Queen (12 Years a Slave), Alexander Payne (Sideways), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air), David O. Russell (The Fighter), Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) who all went on to receive Best Director Academy Award nominations. Campion, Iñárritu and Zhao received a Best Director Academy Award for their films.

Based on the best-selling novel by Miriam Toews, Women Talking follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men. The film stars Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, Kate Hallett, Liv McNeil, August Winter with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand. The film is written and directed by Sarah Polley.

Sarah Polley received an Oscar® nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for her first film as director- Away From Her, based on the short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro. This film also garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for star Julie Christie. Her next film Take This Waltz starred Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, and Sarah Silverman. Stories We Tell, her documentary which examines secrets and memory in her own family, won Best Documentary Film awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Board of Review, and the New York Film Critics Circle, as well as a Writer’s Guild of America award for its screenplay. Polley executive produced and wrote the Netflix limited series Alias, Grace, which she adapted from Margaret Atwood’s novel.

 

 

Image Sources

  • Sarah Polley: Derek Shapton