07/09/2006

London-based leading sales company Capitol Films, co-headed by Jane Barclay and Nick Hill, is bringing the latest works by established filmmakers Sidney Lumet, Bruce Beresford, John Dahl and Irish director Paddy Breathnach to Toronto International Film Festival.

The US director of The Verdict is still shooting his new action thriller, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke attempt "the perfect robbery" without any guns or violence. But when it all goes fatally wrong, greed and revenge leave no-one unscathed. Other key cast members include Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei. Lumet’s US film is being produced by Michael Cerenzie, Brian Linse and William S. Gilmore.

In A Dream of Red Mansions, set to start shooting this autumn in Taiwan and in the UK, Australian-born Beresford will bring to the big screen an epic story of love and courage set against the background of the Chinese cultural revolution. The film is being produced in the UK by Julia Palau (Tusk Productions), with US producer Michele Berk (Lotus Pictures) and Anna Chi.

Capitol Films will have a promo reel ready in Toronto for Dahl’s new film You Kill Me, starring Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson and Bill Pullman. The US filmmaker, who is keeping the film noir genre alive, is back with the story of an alcoholic hit man trying to turn his life around. He gets a job in a mortuary and meets a woman who is a relative of one his hits. The US/Canadian film is currently in post-production.

Shrooms, the fourth title in Capitol’s line-up, is the new film by Breathnach, who directed the 2004 Irish hit Man About Dog. Currently in post-production and based on a script by Pearse Elliott (The Mighty Celt), the horror movie tells the adventures of five college students who go to Ireland in search of notoriously potent magic mushrooms, but terror strikes when one by one they are brutally murdered. The film is being produced by Paddy McDonald and Robert Walpole for Treasure Entertainment in Ireland.