Colin Farrell wins best actor award for The Banshees of Inisherin at Venice Film Festival

His new movie The Banshees of Inisherin - which was filmed on the Aran Islands last summer - won him the best actor award at Venice Film Festival.

The prestigious festival is the first major event of awards season and is widely regarded as an indicator of who will be among the nominees at next year’s Oscars.

The film and Colin and co-star Brendan Gleeson’s performances were also widely praised by critics following the movie’s world premiere this week.

The two stars have reunited with In Bruges director Martin McDonagh for the movie, a black comedy-drama about two friends who have a falling out.

“I can’t imagine ever passing on anything he writes because he’s such an extraordinary writer,” Farrell said at the festival. “In Bruges was a friendship being built between this odd couple. This is the opposite... such a painful, violent dissolving of a friendship.”

The movie was filmed on Achill and the Aran Island of Inishmore last summer, and comes to cinemas this autumn.

Film fans are hopeful the two leading men will share the same onscreen chemistry they did when they played hitmen sent to the Belgian city for a contract killing. It’s the first time the two Dubliners have worked together since that 2008 film.

The Banshees of Inisherin is set on a fictional Irish island and is set in 1923.

Set on an island off the west coast of Ireland, the movie tells the story of two lifelong friends, Padraic (Farrell) and Colm (Gleeson), who find themselves at an impasse when Colm abruptly decides to end their friendship.

With the support of his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon), who along with the local policeman’s son Dominic (Barry Keoghan) has her own qualms within the small island community, a confused and devastated Padraic attempts to reignite their relationship. But when Colm delivers a shocking ultimatum, events start to escalate.

It’s the first time McDonagh has filmed a movie in Ireland, though many of his plays have been set here. The director’s last movie, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, won Oscars for its lead stars Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell.

McDonagh has revealed he wanted to bring his two leading men back together for what he describes as “a break up story” about their friendship.