Category Archives: 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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Irish Film

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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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

Ronan set for Venice premiere

Ronan set for Venice premiere

Irish Film

Ronan set for Venice premiere

Saoirse Ronan is stepping behind the camera. Her directorial debut PAPER PLANE has been selected to screen at the Venice International Film Festival, where it will compete against fifteen other shorts for the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film at the 83rd edition this September. The Oscar-nominated actress also wrote the Screen Ireland-supported film, which stars Martha Malone, KIN’s Clare Dunne, and Tim Creed.

Ronan, who most recently starred in and produced THE OUTRUN, spoke to Deadline back in October 2024 about her long-held ambition to direct, crediting Greta Gerwig, the filmmaker behind LITTLE WOMEN and BARBIE, for pushing her toward it. She said she’d love to do that next, explaining that Gerwig encouraged her to get properly into the preparation stage first, since that’s where the real work of directing takes shape. She also credited her time producing as a kind of crash course, noting that navigating the tough early decisions on a project gave her more confidence as a storyteller.

Up next for Ronan is Jonatan Etzler’s BAD APPLES, followed by a high-profile turn as Linda McCartney in Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles biopics, where she’ll star opposite Paul Mescal’s Paul McCartney.

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Irish Film

Brenda Fricker tribute

Brenda Fricker tribute

Irish Film

Brenda Fricker tribute

Brenda Fricker has died at the age of 81, and Ireland has lost one of the finest actresses it ever produced. She passed away peacefully in Dublin on Thursday night after a period of ill health, and the news has landed hard across the Irish film and television community, where she was regarded not just as a brilliant performer but as a genuine national treasure. Her agent Phil Belfield said it best: we will never see her like again, and the world is lesser for the lack of her.

Fricker made history in 1990 when she became the first Irish woman to win an Academy Award, taking home Best Supporting Actress for her devastating performance as Christy Brown’s mother in MY LEFT FOOT, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s hard to overstate what that moment meant, both for her and for Irish cinema on the world stage. In her acceptance speech she thanked Christy Brown simply for being alive and dedicated the Oscar to his mother, joking that anybody who gives birth twenty-two times deserves one of these. That warmth and dry humour ran through everything she did.

American audiences will forever know her as the Pigeon Lady in HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK, a role that introduced her to a generation who had no idea they were watching an Oscar winner. But her body of work stretched far beyond that, from her years on CASUALTY and CORONATION STREET in the UK, to A TIME TO KILL and SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER in Hollywood, to her later Irish work in VERONICA GUERIN, HOLDING and THE MIRACLE CLUB. Born in Dublin in 1945, she was honoured with the Freedom of the City earlier this year, and had recently published a candid memoir, SHE DIED YOUNG, which became an Irish bestseller.

Ireland’s deputy prime minister Simon Harris called her one of the greatest exports this country has ever produced, an ambassador for Irish talent on the world stage. It’s difficult to disagree. Brenda Fricker gave Irish audiences a sense that our stories, our accents and our people could stand on the biggest stages in the world and win. Rest easy, Brenda. Thank you for everything you gave us.

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Irish Film

THE INCOMER trailer released

THE INCOMER trailer

Irish Film

THE INCOMER trailer

On a remote Scottish island, two siblings have spent their entire lives keeping outsiders at bay, and now the government has sent someone straight to their shore to end that way of life for good.

THE INCOMER, the feature debut from Scottish writer-director Louis Paxton, follows Isla and Sandy as an awkward council worker arrives with orders to remove them from their home, setting off a confrontation that gradually turns into something far stranger and more humane than anyone expects. As the three characters circle each other, their fears, loneliness, and the myths that bind them to the island slowly come into focus, transforming what begins as a standoff into a study of connection. THE INCOMER premiered in the NEXT section of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it took home the NEXT Innovator Award, with the jury singling out its distinctive blend of deadpan humor, animation, and myth.

The film represents Paxton’s first feature after a career built on shorts spanning comedy, drama, horror, and even musicals, alongside his work as a director on the BBC One crime drama SHETLAND. That range shows in THE INCOMER‘s tonal ambition, which asks its cast to hold humor and myth in the same frame without losing the emotional throughline.

Domhnall Gleeson leads as Daniel, the uneasy government official tasked with reclaiming the island, while Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke play Isla and Sandy, the siblings fighting to preserve their peculiar, isolated existence. Emun Elliott, Michelle Gomez, and John Hannah complete the ensemble, with Hannah taking on the memorable role of a mythological sea creature woven into Isla’s story, adding a folkloric texture that seems to be exactly what caught the Sundance jury’s attention.

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Irish Film

Sam Neill tribute

Sam Neill tribute

Irish Film

Sam Neill tribute

Sam Neill, the actor whose easy charisma and understated screen presence carried him from the art houses of New Zealand and Australia to the biggest blockbuster in movie history, has died at 78. His family announced the loss as sudden and unexpected, noting that he had remained free of the blood cancer he’d battled for several years.

Born Nigel John Dermot Neill in Omagh, County Tyrone, in September 1947, he moved with his family to New Zealand as a young child and was raised in Dunedin. He adopted the name “Sam” at school, reportedly to avoid standing out among a crowd of Nigels, and found his way to acting almost by accident while studying at the University of Canterbury.

Neill first drew international attention in Gillian Armstrong’s 1979 film MY BRILLIANT CAREER, which also launched Judy Davis’s career, arriving amid a wave of Australian and New Zealand talent that reshaped world cinema. He went on to work with some of the era’s most acclaimed directors, starring twice opposite Meryl Streep for Fred Schepisi, in PLENTY and A CRY IN THE DARK, and appearing alongside a then-unknown Nicole Kidman in Phillip Noyce’s thriller DEAD CALM.

But it was a role as a paleontologist that made him a household name. His portrayal of Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 JURASSIC PARK brought him worldwide fame, a character he would return to across multiple sequels over three decades. That same year, he played opposite Holly Hunter in Jane Campion’s Oscar-winning THE PIANO.

His range extended across genre and medium: a haunted investigator in John Carpenter’s IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, a Soviet submariner in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, and later television work including PEAKY BLINDERS, THE TUDORS, and Apple TV+’s INVASION. His performance as the title wizard in NBC’s 1998 miniseries MERLIN earned him one of two Emmy nominations, alongside three Golden Globe nominations. He had, by his own reckoning, over 150 screen credits.

Off screen, Neill split his life between acting and winemaking. In 1983 he bought land in Central Otago and launched his Two Paddocks vineyard, calling it half his life and a source of deep reward. He was famously reluctant to embrace celebrity, preferring life on his New Zealand farm, where he was known for posting photos of animals given the names of friends and colleagues.

He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1991 and was knighted by New Zealand in 2022. Diagnosed with a rare blood cancer in 2023, he wrote his memoir during treatment and spoke candidly about facing mortality with characteristic wit rather than fear.

He is survived by his family, who described him as passing “with the dignity that has characterised his whole life.”

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Irish Film