Now shooting in Northern Ireland, Five Minutes of Heaven dramatises the story of Alistair Little, a young UVF member who spent 12 years in prison for the murder of Jim Griffin, a 19-year-old Catholic, in Lurgan, Co Armagh in 1975. The victim's 11-year-old brother Joe was a witness.
Liam Neeson, who is from Ballymena, Co Antrim, plays Little as an adult, with Coleraine native James Nesbitt as the grown-up Joe Griffin. The director is Oliver Hirschbiegel, who made the Oscar-nominated Hitler film Downfall (2004). Guy Hibbert, who scripted Omagh (2004), wrote the screenplay.
"The story is about two real people who stand up and say it the way it is," Hibbert says. "It was important to get their full permission and co-operation. Working separately with both Alistair and Joe on the fictional areas provided a unique way of telling this story and revealed there were no easy answers."
Dublin-based Element Pictures will release Five Minutes of Heaven in Ireland.
Cannes festival's late shows
Four weeks after Cannes wrapped for another year, three of the US films shown in competition at the festival have yet to be acquired for US distribution: Steven Soderbergh's Che, starring Benicio Del Toro; Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman; and James Gray's Two Lovers, with Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow.
The only US entry at Cannes that's assured of a US release is Clint Eastwood's riveting The Exchange, starring Angelina Jolie. It opens there in October and is due here on January 2nd.
Now 78, the indefatigable Eastwood is already in post- production on his next movie, Gran Torino, on which he doubles as star and director. It will be released in the US in December.
Audiences in Ireland and the UK will have a long wait to see some of this year's Cannes prize-winners. The Class, Laurent Cantet's enthralling French school drama that won the Palme d'Or, is not due here until February 9th. Paolo Sorrentino's vibrant Italian political drama
Il Divo, a runner-up at Cannes, will not open until January 23rd.
Both are distributed by Artificial Eye, which will release the haunting Israeli animated documentary Waltz with Bashir, which surprisingly failed to collect a prize at Cannes, on November 21st.
O'Toole picks his flicks
The venerable Peter O'Toole will be guest of honour at the 20th Galway Film Fleadh, which runs from July 8th to 13th. O'Toole will select the films to be shown in his tribute programme and will participate in a public interview on the closing day.
www.galwayfilmfleadh.com
Hunger wins in Sydney
Having won the Camera d'Or at Cannes last month, Steve McQueen's Hunger, starring Michael Fassbender as IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, this week received the top prize at the Sydney Film Festival. Announcing the award, jury president Gillian Armstrong said: "Hunger was selected for its controlled clarity of vision, its extraordinary detail and bravery, the dedication of its cast, and the power and resonance of its humanity."
Ryan and the real guy
Ryan Gosling and Craig Gillespie, the star and director of the endearing Lars and the Real Girl, are teaming up again for The Dallas Buyers Club. The factually based drama features Gosling as a Texas electrician diagnosed with Aids in 1986 and given six months to live. Frustrated with the scarcity of medical options, he used alternative drugs and created a lucrative smuggling business by making them available to Aids patients. Woodroof died in 1992.
mdwyer@irish-times.ie
