'The Eclipse' to open LA Irish Film Festival as Full Line-Up Announced
Conor McPherson's THE ECLIPSE has been announced as the opening film at the upcoming 2nd Annual LA Irish Film Festival next month.The film which stars Ciaran Hinds, who picked up the Best Actor award at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year for his role, will open the festival at the Academy's Linwood Dunn Theatre in Hollywood on 23rd September.
Written by McPherson and Billy Roche, the supernatural drama tells the story about a widower (Ciarán Hinds) who is haunted by nightmarish visions. When he volunteers at an international literary festival, his life converges with a beautiful author of supernatural fiction (Iben Hjejle) and a self obsessed novelist (Aidan Quinn) drawing them into a life-altering collision between the living and the dead.
The four day festival will screen a host of IFB-funded Irish features, documentaries, animation and shorts including The Secret of Kells, Kisses, Waveriders and Granny O'Grimms Sleeping Beauty.
The animated feature film THE SECRET OF KELLS directed by Tomm Moore and produced by Cartoon Saloon recently beat off stiff competition to pick up the Audience Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival having previously picked up the Jury and Audience Awards in Kecskemet in Hungary, the Audience Award in Annecy and receiving a Special Mention at the Zagreb Animation Festival in Croatia in June.
Lance Daly's critically acclaimed KISSES has screened at some of the worlds most prestigious festivals such as the Toronto, Locarno and Telluride film festivals and has won numerous awards such as the Audience Award at the Miami Film Festival and two IFTAs.
The award winning feature documentary WAVERIDERS directed by Joel Conroy tells the epic story of the unlikely Irish roots of the worldwide surfing phenomenon and today's pioneers of big wave surfing. Featuring renowned Irish, British and American surfers it tracks the influence of legendary Hawaiian waterman, George Freeth, the son of an Irishman, and the first true soul surfer.
CHERRYBOMB directed by Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn and starring Robert Sheehan and Rupert Grint was previously selected for the Generation 14 Plus of the renowned Berlinale Film Festival earlier this year. It tells the story of three teenagers who embark on a wild weekend of drink, drugs, shop-lifting and stealing cars.
Pat Collin's feature documentary GABRIEL BYRNE - STORIES FROM HOME is a revealing and evocative insight into the life and creative impulses of the actor Gabriel Byrne while Vittoria Colonna's IDENTITIES documents the multicoloured, multicultural transgender community in Ireland.
IFB-funded shorts to screen at the festival include Nicky Phelan's GRANNY O'GRIMMS SLEEPING BEAUTY and Conor Ferguson's ATLANTIC.
Other Irish films to screen at the festival include PEACEFIRE the debut feature film from writer/director Macdara Vallely and Matt Clarke's DA which will screen as a tribute to the late Hugh Leondard.
These screenings along with a number of events co-presented by the American Cinamatheque will take place at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.
The Los Angeles Irish Film Festival will take place 23rd - 27th September.