Paddy Breathnach's exuberant, blackly humorous Irish road movie I Went Down, which was screened in the market at Cannes, is to have its world premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival on August 21st. The film, which stars Brendan Gleeson and Peter McDonald, has been acquired for Irish and British distribution by Buena Vista International and will be released in Ireland on October 3rd.
The Edinburgh festival opens on Sunday night with another of this year's Cannes discoveries, Alain Berliner's French film, Ma Vie En Rose, dealing with a seven-year-old boy who's convinced he should be a girl, and closes on August 24th with a new print of John Huston's 1975 film, The Man Who Would Be King, with its star, Sean Connery, in attendance.
Among the highlights in the vast Edinburgh programme are Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, Richard Kwietniowski's Love And Death On Long Island, Neil Labute's In The Company Of Men, Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, Gary Oldman's Nil By Mouth, and two movies of specific Scottish interest, John Madden's Mrs Brown and John Byrne's The Slab Boys.
On August 27th, three days after Edinburgh closes, the Venice Film Festival opens with the new Woody Allen movie, Deconstructing Henry. Among the movies in competition is US director Jim McBride's The Informant, filmed in Ireland under the title Johnny Loves Susie. It stars the Irish actor Anthony Broph as an IRA terrorist, Timothy Dalton as an RUC officer and Cary Elwes as a British army lieutenant.
The competition at Venice also includes Wayne Wang's Chinese Box, Takeshi Kitano's Hana-Bi, Mike Figgis's One-Night Stand, Zhang Yimou's Keep Cool and Alan Rickman's directing debut, The Winter Guest, starring Emma Thompson. Showing out of competition are Paul Schrader's Affliction, Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One, Sally Potter's The Tango Lesson, Guillermo Del Toro's Mimic and Brian Gilbert's Wilde starring Stephen Fry as Oscar.
Overlapping by three days with Venice, the Toronto Film Festival opens on September 4th with The Sweet Hereafter. Among the 200 features on the packed programme will be the world premieres of Marleen Gorris's Mrs Dalloway, starring Vanessa Redgrave, and Kasi Lemmons's Eve's Bayou, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Also showing will be Gilles Mackinnon's film of Pat Barker's Regeneration with Jonathan Pryce and Jonny Lee Miller, which is also in Edinburgh and Venice, and another Venice entry, Vera Belomnt's Marquise, starring Sophie Marceau. Toronto will present the North American premiere of one of the few outstanding movies at Cannes this year - Curtis Hanson's film of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, starring Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito.
The Carte Noire Ninth Dublin French Film Festival, which will run from November 3rd to 13th at the IFC, promises 30 new French-language features, a Jean-Pierre Melville retrospective, a programme of classic films, a short film competition, a video programme, a documentary season, and a special 50th anniversary tribute to the Cannes Film Festival.
