30/04/2007

Irish film Kings, which according to industry rumour will screen at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight section – whose programme will be unveiled May 3 – is also the first Irish/English bilingual film and the first Irish language feature to be set in London, with an award-winning cast led by internationally renowned Irish actor Colm Meaney (The Commitments, Star Trek).

Adapted by producer-director Tom Collins (Hush-A-Bye Baby, Teenage Kicks: The Story of the Undertones) from Jimmy Murphy’s critically acclaimed play The Kings of The Kilburn High Road, the powerful story traces the lives of six Irish men who came to London in the late 1970s in search of a better life. Reunited 30 years later when a mutual friend dies in tragic circumstances, they are forced to confront their lives as long-term immigrants.

Collins very much regards Kings as both a London and universal film: “The Irish helped to build London and this film looks at some of the casualties of that fate. I'm not saying every Paddy had a hard time…most had a far better life than back in Ireland but some fell between the cracks. Our aim was to make ‘a foreign film’ in England because I’m no longer sure England as we knew it exists. Our characters still talk in Irish in an attempt to accentuate their personal and national bond and their language is to them their last act of solidarity. This is an untold story off immigration and loneliness, which continues today with migrants from Lithuania, Poland and China”.

The film is also the first feature to be produced by Jackie Larkin for her company Newgrange Pictures, and is being handled internationally by Carey Fitzgerald’s London-based sales, production and finance house High Point Films.

Collins’ next directorial project is the film adaptation of Seamus Deane's celebrated novel Reading in the Dark for High Point Productions.