Donegal actor Art Parkinson is adding another accolade to his collection after his movie won a BAFTA award.
The 70th annual BAFTA Film Awards ceremony took place last night in the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Teen star Art Parkinson (15) who is a native of Movile, voices the lead actor in the epic animation Kubo and the Two Strings which one a BAFTA for Best Animated Film.
Kubo was up against Disney’s Zootopia and Moana, and Disney/Pixar’s Finding Dory. The victory is a great achievement for the independent production and marks a move from the Disney-typical 3D CGI films that usually take the awards.
The film is the longest stop-motion feature ever made – at 1 hour and 41 minutes long it is one minute longer than Coraline.
Kubo and the Two Strings has been labelled as a ‘visual masterpiece’. The epic tale directed by Travis Knight sees a one-eyed boy in Japan with the gift of telling fantastical stories embarking on a mystical quest to discover his family’s magical legacy.
Art and his co-stars including Matthew McConaughey, Charlize Theron and Ralph Fiennes will be looking forward to crowning a marvellous awards season with the hope of an Oscar award at the end of this month. Kubo and the Two Strings has received Academy Award nominations in two categories – Best Animated Movie and Best Visual Effects.
The BAFTAs are considered the British edition of the Oscars and often serve as a good hint to who will win Oscars.
Art retold the story of how he learned about the Oscar nomination on the red carpet last night in London. His muinteoir Derval Newman at Coláiste Chineál Eoghain in Buncrana surprised him with the news in the school corridor. Art revealed that his schoolmates had a good laugh about the high-profile nomination. “I got the mick taken out of me a bit,” he told ODE.
Art studies through Irish while out filming all over the world. He was eager to tell entertainment reporters at the BAFTAs about his school, which has 37 students.
After the Oscars, Art will be having an action-packed March as he works as an Ambassador for Seachtain na Gaeilge 2017. He will be promoting the biggest Irish festival in Ireland and the world alongside Letterkenny TV personality Michael Carey and Miriam O’ Callaghan.
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