Two Irish Feature Films Selected for Toronto International Film Festival
The Irish film industry continues its successful international run as two Irish feature films, Garage and Kings, have been selected to screen in the Contemporary World Cinema section of the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, which takes place this year from 6th - 15th September.Directed by Tom Collins and starring Colm Meaney (Intermission), Kings is a touching drama which tells the story of a group of men from Connemara who emigrated from Ireland to London in the late seventies promising to return home rich and successful. Twenty-five years have past when Jackie, the youngest member of the gang, dies. It is when his friends are forced to confront the possibility that Jackie's death was no accident but possibly suicide that they must face up to the bitter chill of truth.
The award-winning film Garage directed by Lenny Abrahamson will also have its North American premiere at the festival. Garage picked up the CICAE Cinema Award after it screened at the Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.
Garage is the second film from director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Mark O'Halloran the team behind the award winning black comedy Adam & Paul. It stars Irish comedian Pat Shortt and features a cast which includes Anne-Marie Duff (Shameless, The Magdalene Sisters) and newcomer Conor Ryan.
Regarded by his neighbours as a harmless misfit, Josie (Pat Shortt) has spent all his adult life as the caretaker of a crumbling petrol station on the outskirts of a small town in the mid-west of Ireland. He is limited, lonely, yet relentlessly optimistic and, in his own peculiar way, happy. Garage follows Josie's hapless search for intimacy over the course of a summer which sees his life changed forever.
"Irish cinema continues to receive international recognition at the highest levels. Toronto is a vital festival especially for the US market. I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the makers of Garage and Kings, two of the most courageous and moving Irish films produced this year" said Simon Perry, CEO, Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board.
This is the third year running that the Irish film industry will have a strong presence at the Toronto Film Festival. Three Irish films were selected for this prestigious festival in both 2006 and 2005 including The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Pavee Lackeen and Breakfast on Pluto.
Garage is produced by Ed Guiney, executive produced by Andrew Lowe for Element Pictures and co-financed by Bord Scannán na hÉireann / the Irish Film Board, Film4, RTÉ and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland.
Written and directed by Tom Collins, Kings is produced by Jackie Larkin for Newgrange Pictures, with finance from Bord Scannán na hÉireann/The Irish Film Board, Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission, the Broadcast Commission of Ireland and TG4.
Irish audiences will get an opportunity to see Kings and Garage in cinemas when they go on theatrical release this Autumn.