The 12-day London Film Festival ended Sunday with the UK premiere of "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," a female-led tragicomedy that reflects Hollywood's latest sexual scandal.

Being tipped as an Oscar contender next year, the film stars Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson and it is directed by Martin McDonagh. At the end of a movie fortnight overshadowed by a cascade of sexual harassment and rape allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, the director said he was happy to close the festival with his creation, calling it "a proper cool film" with a woman at its heart.

The film won best screenplay at the Venice Film Festival and last month took the Toronto International Film Festival's People's Choice Award, which both are bellwethers for Hollywood's coming awards season.

"We were happy with the film. We thought it was a good one but you never know if it's going to connect with an audience, really, until you show it to them and like in both Venice and Toronto where it's played this far, the waves of laughter was like kind of shocking to me and also like the gasps at the twists and turns of the plot,” McDonagh said.

In the story, McDormand plays Mildred, a small-town woman in her 50s, whose daughter has been raped and murdered. Without seeing any progress made to catch the culprit in the past seven months, Mildred hires three large billboards and confronts the town's police chief, played by Woody Harrelson, in order to seek justice for her daughter.

A day after the Academy of Motion Pictures expelled Weinstein over allegations of sexual harassment and rape, some actors were more forthright than others over the scandal.

Clarke Peters, who plays an African-American sheriff in the small Missouri town beset by racial tensions in "Three Billboards," said Hollywood "should go into a room and reassess their humanity,"

The 61st London festival has featured glitzy galas for other potential award season favorites, including directing duo Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' tennis drama "Battle of the Sexes," Guillermo del Toro's fantastical "The Shape of Water" as well as Sean Baker's vibrant "The Florida Project."