Category Archives: Irish Film

Murphy saves historic Kerry theatre

Murphy saves historic Cork theatre

Irish Film

Murphy saves historic Cork theatre

OPPENHEIMER star Cillian Murphy and Yvonne McGuinness have expressed their delight after securing approval for their ambitious plans to revive Dingle’s Phoenix Cinema as a multi-disciplinary arts space. The artist and her Oscar-winning actor husband purchased the historic Kerry cinema in late 2024 and unveiled a redevelopment vision that retains the building’s cinematic function while dramatically expanding its creative footprint, adding a performance space, exhibition and rehearsal areas, artist studios, a bar, café, restaurant, and a redesigned courtyard.

The path to approval was not straightforward. Kerry County Council initially granted planning permission, but the project’s fate was pushed into the hands of An Coimisiún Pleanála earlier this year after several third-party appeals from local residents. That hurdle has now been cleared, paving the way for the cinema’s transformation.

Murphy and McGuinness share deep roots in the west Kerry Gaeltacht. The Cork-born actor’s family holidayed in the area for decades during his childhood, and he continues to spend extended periods there with his own family today. McGuinness has framed the project as an effort to reopen the venue’s doors and broaden its creative potential, restoring the Phoenix to its historic place at the heart of Dingle’s cultural life.

The cinema’s story is one of resilience. Destroyed by fire in both 1921 and 1938, it was rebuilt on each occasion by the Houlihan family, whose determination gave the venue its fitting name. For more than a century before its closure during the covid pandemic, the Phoenix served as a vital social and cultural hub for the west Kerry community, hosting drama productions, concerts, and dances, and later welcoming showbands and performers including Rory Gallagher and Dana. Murphy himself has a personal connection to the venue beyond ownership, having visited in 2010 for a screening of his film PERRIER’S BOUNTY.

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Bea set for STARMAN

Aisling Bea set for STARMAN

Irish Film

Aisling Bea set for STARMAN

Aisling Bea is heading to Mars — well, at least in fiction. The Irish actress and BAFTA TV winner has joined the cast of STARMAN, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively revealed, marking another high-profile addition to an already stacked ensemble. Bea joins Oscar winner Brendan Fraser, known for THE WHALE and THE MUMMY, and two-time Emmy winner Jeff Daniels, familiar to audiences from DUMB AND DUMBER and THE NEWSROOM, in the cosmic sci-fi thriller currently filming in Australia. Emmy winner Josh Wakely, who created BEAT BUGS, is directing from his own original screenplay, giving the project a singular creative vision from page to screen.

STARMAN follows Tom Adams, played by Fraser, an architect of the future who leads a historic expedition to Mars and finds himself at the forefront of humanity’s next great frontier. When unforeseen events leave him stranded millions of miles from Earth, his mission transforms into a desperate race against time, fuelled equally by survival instinct and love. Bea steps into the role of Julia Hanley, a defiant and magnetic Irish photographer who looks past Tom’s world-changing ambition to find the man underneath, ultimately redefining his life through love. It’s a role that should give Bea real emotional range to work with, a shift from the comedic sharpness audiences know her for and a chance to anchor the human heart of a big-swing space epic. With Fraser and Daniels already bringing serious pedigree to the production, Bea’s casting only raises the intrigue around what Wakely is building with STARMAN, and Irish audiences will have plenty of reason to watch this one closely as it takes shape in Australia.

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Keoghan set for LEMONADE

Keoghan set for LEMONADE

Irish Film

Keoghan set for LEMONADE

Barry Keoghan is set to return to Irish storytelling with LEMONADE, an intimate indie drama that marks documentary filmmaker Kim Bartley’s narrative feature debut, and the first details and images have now arrived. Set against the backdrop of Ireland’s care system, LEMONADE is billed as a story of first loves, second chances and the power of human connection, and one striking first-look still shows Keoghan’s character Josh sitting in a car with tears in his eyes, hinting at the emotional weight the film carries.

The story follows teenager Danny, played by Lewis Brophy, whose life is thrown off course by a single mistake that threatens his future. Danny unexpectedly reconnects with Josh, a former social worker who once tried to help him but whose own missteps had driven the two apart. As they find their way back to one another, Josh once again attempts to guide Danny toward manhood, and Danny comes to learn that the people who believe in you most can become family, blood ties or not.

Brophy comes to LEMONADE fresh off the acclaimed Berlinale prizewinner CHRISTY, continuing a strong run for the young Irish talent. The film, shot earlier this year in Dublin, also stars Carla Tous, Eileen Walsh and Imelda May. Rachel Lysaght and Farah Abushwesha produce, with an executive producer roster that includes Bartley herself alongside Geraldine East, Niamh Fagan, Desmond Byrne, Lorcan Kavanagh, Peg Cafferty, Deepak Sikka, Mark Foligno and Sire Ramos. Keoghan also serves as an executive producer through his newly launched production company Wolfcub, whose debut feature BUTTERFLY JAM, also starring Keoghan, opened the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Speaking to Variety ahead of Cannes, Keoghan reflected on LEMONADE‘s deeply personal resonance, noting the clear parallels between Danny’s story and his own upbringing as a foster child in Dublin, a connection that lends the project an unmistakable authenticity.

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Irish Film

Glen Hansard tribute

Glen Hansard tribute

Irish Film

Glen Hansard tribute

We’ve lost a national treasure. Glen Hansard, the Oscar-winning singer-songwriter and one of Dublin’s most beloved native sons, has died at the age of 56 following a motorcycle accident in the city this morning. Gardaí confirmed a single-vehicle collision on the R109 Lower Road near Strawberry Beds in Lucan, shortly before 4.30am, with emergency services arriving to find Hansard fatally injured. His management company, ATC Management, released a statement saying his family is deeply shocked and heartbroken, and has asked for privacy at this extremely difficult time.

Born in Ballymun in 1970, Hansard’s story is one of the great Irish rags-to-riches tales, beginning as a teenage busker on the streets of Dublin before co-founding The Frames in 1990. As the band’s frontman, guitarist, and chief songwriter, he helped shape one of Ireland’s most enduring and emotionally raw rock acts, building a devoted following through albums like Fitzcarraldo, For the Birds, and The Cost. But it was film that carried Hansard’s name far beyond Ireland’s shores. He first appeared on screen in Alan Parker’s THE COMMITMENTS in 1991, playing guitarist Outspan Foster, a role that introduced him to audiences well outside the music world. It was ONCE, however, the 2007 Dublin-set musical drama in which he starred alongside Markéta Irglová, that cemented his legacy. The film’s soundtrack became a global phenomenon, and its centerpiece, “Falling Slowly,” earned Hansard and Irglová the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2008, a moment that remains one of the most cherished in Irish cultural history.

Beyond music and film, Hansard’s fingerprints are all over Irish culture. He became the original presenter of RTÉ’s celebrated music series Other Voices in 2002, helping launch what would become one of the country’s most important platforms for new artists. Just this month, he returned to Dublin for a homecoming performance at Trinity College, a show that critics called picture-perfect, staged a mere stone’s throw from where he once busked on Grafton Street. That circularity, from street corner to stadium and back again, defined a career built on authenticity and an unshakeable connection to his home city.

Tonight, Ireland mourns not just a musician or an actor, but a voice that gave shape to something deeply national: the ache, humor, and resilience of ordinary Dublin life turned into art the whole world could feel. Glen Hansard leaves behind a monumental legacy on screen and stage, and a body of work that will keep finding new listeners for generations to come.

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Irish Film

Andrew Scott talks STARLINGS

Andrew Scott talks STARLINGS

Irish Film

Andrew Scott talks STARLINGS

STARLINGS, the striking debut novel from actor-turned-author Russell Tovey (THE NIGHT MANAGER, ANGELS IN AMERICA), has arrived as an Audible original, and its two lead performers are opening up about what it took to bring the story to life. Andrew Scott (FLEABAG, SHERLOCK) and George MacKay (1917, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY) sat down for an Audible Roundtable alongside Tovey himself to talk through the emotional terrain of the project, and the conversation is as layered as the story it explores.

At its centre is Donald, a forty-something aspiring drag queen carrying a lifetime of bitterness beneath the nail polish, estranged from his northern hometown ever since his father threw him out for wearing his late mother’s clothes. That fragile equilibrium is shattered when his younger brother Owen, strange and beautiful and utterly unexpected, turns up on his doorstep, forcing Donald to confront whether Owen’s arrival might pull him out of his depression, or whether he’s fated to drag his sibling down with him instead.

Scott takes on Donald while MacKay plays Owen, and both actors are no strangers to emotionally charged, complex storytelling, though STARLINGS presented a different kind of challenge given its audio-only format. Across the roundtable, the trio dig into Tovey’s inspiration for the novel, the tricky business of embodying a character purely through voice rather than physical presence, and the significance of drag culture as a lens for Donald’s journey. It’s a rare glimpse into the space where page and performance meet, and a chance to hear directly from the people who shaped it.

Anyone keen to experience STARLINGS for themselves can find it on Audible now.

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Gleeson on Deadline’s THE ACTOR SIDE

Gleeson on THE ACTOR'S SIDE

Irish Film

Gleeson on THE ACTOR'S SIDE

Domhnall Gleeson has appeared in a number of very big-name movies. They include his General Hux in a couple of STAR WARS pics, his Bill Weasley in a couple of HARRY POTTERs, Oscar winner THE REVENANT, EX MACHINA and any number of others. But now this Irish actor has settled in with hit Peacock comedy THE PAPER, a mockumentary-style show in the tradition of THE OFFICE that shares creator Greg Daniels in common with that earlier hit. Gleeson, son of actor Brendan Gleeson, plays Ned Sampson, the new editor of a small-town Ohio newspaper called the Toledo Truth Teller, which is followed by the same documentary crew that did THE OFFICE. It has already been renewed for a second season.

Gleeson joins the Deadline video series THE ACTOR’S SIDE, talking up THE PAPER and why he thinks it is the perfect fit for him, and also discussing his wildly varied and successful career. It includes numerous other projects, even a recent Taylor Swift video, and two anticipated upcoming movies including Werner Herzog’s BUCKING FASTARDS and the Sundance hit THE INCOMER.

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Irish Film

Scott’s ELSINORE set for TIFF

Scott's ELSINORE set for TIFF

Irish Film

Scott's ELSINORE set for TIFF

Andrew Scott is heading back to TIFF, and this time he’s bringing one of the most anticipated dramas of the year with him. ELSINORE, directed by Simon Stone, has been selected for the Special Presentations programme at the 51st Toronto International Film Festival, where it will receive its Canadian premiere. The film is among the first 64 titles unveiled across the Gala and Special Presentations sections for the festival, which runs September 10 to 20.

Scott stars as the late Ian Charleson, the acclaimed stage and screen actor, in a biographical drama written by Stephen Beresford. ELSINORE follows the final months of Charleson’s life as he delivers what became a legendary performance as Hamlet at London’s National Theatre, all while privately living with AIDS. It’s a role that demands both technical command and deep emotional exposure, and given Scott’s range, this feels like exactly the kind of part he was built for. Academy Award winner Olivia Colman co-stars, adding further weight to an already extraordinary cast.

The ensemble surrounding Scott and Colman is stacked with talent: Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Luke Thompson, Monica Dolan, Juliet Stevenson, Joe Locke, Adeel Akhtar, Matthew Beard, David Dawson, Kadiff Kirwan, Dickie Beau and Peter Mullan all feature. Scott is also producing the film, a sign of how personally invested he is in bringing Charleson’s story to the screen with care and accuracy.

The industry has already taken notice. Earlier this month, Focus Features acquired ELSINORE for distribution across the U.S. and several international territories, following what was described as a competitive bidding process. That kind of demand ahead of a festival premiere speaks volumes about the buzz building around this project.

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Irish Film

HOKUM director in conversation

HOKUM director in conversation

Irish Film

HOKUM director in conversation

There’s something almost quaint about wanting a horror movie to just scare you. No hidden agenda, no thesis statement lurking under the surface — just genuine, bone-deep fear. Damian Mc Carthy understands this better than most working in the genre right now. Three features in, the Irish director has built a reputation on something that sounds simple but rarely is: films that actually deliver on the promise of horror. We’ve all grown weary of certain conversations — the endless debates over what “elevated horror” even means (nothing, really), or the reflexive insistence that a film is “secretly about grief” as if horror hasn’t always trafficked in loss and mourning. What’s genuinely exhausting is watching filmmakers trade atmosphere and dread for metaphors so blunt they might as well come with subtitles explaining themselves.

Mc Carthy isn’t interested in that trade-off. Yes, his films carry existential weight. But scratch the surface and you’ll find a director who simply wants to terrify his audience — and HOKUM, his newest effort, proves it. The setup could’ve been lifted from a King paperback: a jaded, grief-stricken writer travels to Ireland to spread his parents’ ashes near the hotel where they spent their honeymoon. Adam Scott plays Ohm with a terrific balance of biting sarcasm and genuine anguish, and there’s a cruel irony to the character — a man who makes his living writing fiction yet can’t bring himself to accept the impossible things happening around him. He calls it all “hokum,” a stubborn refusal that mirrors his inability to process his own history, and that same stubbornness is precisely what pulls him deeper into the hotel’s darkest corners — and his own.

What makes Mc Carthy’s folk horror so unsettling isn’t just what he shows you, but how he shows it. His blocking is meticulous, and he has an uncanny sense of where a frame’s attention should land. A smirking trinket. A rabbit anchoring some unnamable TV broadcast. HOKUM holds on these images a beat too long, angles them just slightly wrong, and lets your imagination do the rest of the damage. Soon enough you’re following Ohm through corridors that stretch too far and elevators that climb somewhere they shouldn’t, into a world where witches and spirits are simply given. Scott anchors all of it beautifully — venomous, guarded, prickly as hell, but with something soft and aching underneath that never fully disappears. Mc Carthy has never hidden his debt to King, and Ohm earns his place among that lineage of writers haunted by more than just their imaginations.

Before HOKUM hits theaters, Mc Carthy talks the lost art of making horror actually scary, Adam Scott’s performance, and where Ireland’s current horror renaissance is headed.

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Irish Film