Film Festival Furore

Brit director Peter Mullan walked away with the Golden Lion award for best film at the Venice Film Festival yesterday despite getting the Pope himself all hot and bothered. Denounced by the Vatican as an "angry and rancorous provocation" that had been allowed to "pass as a work of art," Mullan's award-winning film The Magdalene Sisters tells the true story of four supposedly promiscuous girls unjustly sent to the Magdalene Convents in 1960s Ireland, who were physically and mentally abused by the nuns. After collecting his award to loud applause, Mullan commented "To say that my movie is a scandal is absurd. I didn't create the Magdalene Asylums, they created them. I just wanted to expose one of the great injustices of the second half of the 20th century." He insisted his film is "not just about the Catholic Church and how they oppressed young women in Ireland. It's about all faiths, all fundamentalist faiths, that believe they have the right to oppress young women.'' Denunciation from the Vatican is hardly the first hurdle the film has hit. Taking three and half years to make and