Scots director in line for Cannes award

Published on Thursday 14 April 2011 18:39

SCOTTISH director Lynne Ramsay's new film is in the running for the Cannes Film Festival's top prize.

Her adaptation of the best-selling novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, by London-based Lionel Shriver, stars Tilda Swinton as a mother coming to terms with her son's role in a school massacre.

It is one of 19 films shortlisted for the prestigious Palme d'Or.

Ramsay, who was born in Glasgow and educated in Edinburgh, is up against Spanish film maker Pedro Almodovar and Hollywood veteran Terrence Malick.

She is one of four women directors in the running for the festival's top prize this year, and will lead British hopes at the glamorous festival as the only British director in contention.

The film features two parents trying to understand why their son tried to kill his classmates.

The novel, written from the point of view of the killer's mother, won the Orange Prize for fiction.

The film features Swinton, who won an Oscar for her performance in Michael Clayton, in the leading role opposite John C Reilly.

Ramsay's debut feature, Ratcatcher, screened at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and opened the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

But she has not made a feature film since Morven Callar in 2002, after a project to film the novel The Lovely Bones went to another director.