Film makes it five Grand Prix for McCann Melbourne as Aussies rule Cannes – shame about the rugby..

Metro Trains has won as almost as many Grand Prix as the number of dumb ways to die illustrated in its animated spot by McCann. The biggest winner at Cannes this year, it has picked up the Grand Prix in Integrated, Radio, Director, PR and Film as well as lots and lots of Lions. This, coupled with the fact that Australia got its biggest ever haul of Lions in Cannes history last year, has led observers (mostly Australian ones) to point to a creative renaissance down under.

An Australian journalist who suggested this to the Film jury at Cannes got short shrift however. The Australian member of the jury said it was a just a “coincidence” that so many awards were going to the land of Oz, while the Film jury president Sir John Hegarty said: “I do get worried about this nationalistic thing. We should celebrate the creativity, not the nationalism behind it.”

Speaking of nationalism, the UK’s performance was led from the front by Channel 4’s “Meet The Superhumans”. The powerful film bagged the Film Craft Grand Prix and a Film Gold. Hegarty hailed it – along with other big winners at Cannes, Dove “Real Beauty Sketches” and Intel & Toshiba’s “The Beauty Inside (below)” – as work that goes “to the core” of who we are.

Hegarty also took the opportunity at the conference to say that this is best time to be young and in advertising. In his day, he said, being wet behind the ears was a disadvantage when you wanted to be taken seriously. Hegarty, renowned for his sharp suits, joked that nowadays if some young creative walks in to a client meeting with “a slightly smelly T-shirt” on, clients think the smelly T-shirt knows more about creativity than anyone else in the room.

***If any of you find the above headline even more perplexing than usual – it’s because the British Lions beat the Australians in Brisbane today, rather fortunately – ed.