Colin Farrell, a Golden Globe winner for In Bruges this week, joins Saoirse Ronan, an Oscar nominee for Atonement last year, in Australian director Peter Weir’s The Way Back, which starts shooting in Bulgaria in March. Both Irish actors play Russians in this factually-based film following an escape from a Siberian gulag in 1942. They co-star with Jim Sturgess and Ed Harris.
It’s the first film from Weir since Master and Commander (2003). His earlier work includes Witness, Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show. Farrell has three movies due this year: Danis Tanovic’s Triage, Neil Jordan’s Ondine and Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.
Berri bows out
Paying tribute to Claude Berri, who died in Paris on Monday, Nicolas Sarkozy described him as “the most legendary figure of French cinema”, while Cannes Film Festival president Gilles Jacob declared that “French film is now an orphan”.
Berri, who was 74, had been directing his 20th feature, Trésor (Treasure). His distinguished career as writer, director, producer and actor began in 1962, when he made the short film Le Poulet, which won him an Academy Award. He produced more than 50 feature films, among them Roman Polanski’s Tess, Patrice Chéreau’s La Reine Margot, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Bear, the award- winning Couscous and the recent French box-office phenomenon Welcome to the Sticks.
As a director, Berri reached his widest international audience in 1986 with Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, his classically formed, consummately acted companion films of greed, deceit and revenge in Provence.
In 1997 Berri famously fired Juliette Binoche as the heroine of his French Resistance drama Lucie Aubrac, replacing her with Carole Bouquet. Binoche responded: “When a director is so possessive about his film it’s a nightmare.”
Oscars’ foreign film furore
The Academy Awards came under critical fire last year when several deserving entries – Persepolis, The Edge of Heaven and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – were eliminated early in the nominations for Best Foreign-Language film. Gomorrah, the runner-up at Cannes last year, was omitted on Tuesday when the 65 national entries were pared down to nine for the final five places on the ballot. Of the shortlisted movies, the most likely nominees are The Class, Everlasting Moments, Three Monkeys, Waltz with Bashir and The Baader Meinhof Complex.
The shorts are on for Sundance
Two Irish-produced shorts are among those that made the cut from more than 6,000 entries to the Sundance Film Festival, which opened in the US last night.
Written and directed by Tony O’Donoghue, A Film from My Parish: Six Farms blends live action and animation in its picture of his Co Tipperary roots. Written and directed by Connor Clements, James features Niall Wright (from Mickybo Me) as a teen struggling to deal with his sexuality.
Neeson and Egoyan get back together
In Chloe, which films in Toronto next month, Liam Neeson plays a man whose doctor wife (Julianne Moore) suspects him of adultery. Chloe reunites Neeson with Atom Egoyan, who directed him in the critically acclaimed New York stage production of Samuel Beckett’s Eh Joe last summer.
