A potentially controversial new film by Irish director John Crowley has been the subject of the first international distribution deal at the Toronto International Film Festival over the weekend.
The leading US distributor, The Weinstein Company, paid an undisclosed sum to acquire the world distribution rights to the film, which is titled Boy A.
Speaking after the film's world premiere in Toronto, Crowley said his film is not based on the killers of the two-year-old Liverpool boy Jamie Bulger in 1993.
However, he accepted that Jonathan Trigell's 2004 novel, on which the film is based, may well have been inspired by that murder, for which two 10-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, were convicted.
The central character in the film is a young man who has spent most of his life in juvenile prisons for the murder of another child.
The film begins as the young man (played by newcomer Andrew Garfield) is released, given a new identity as Jack Burridge, relocated to Manchester and set up in accommodation and a job.
Jack's anonymity proves both a blessing and a curse as he enters the outside world and discovers socialising, drinking and sex for the first time, while remaining haunted by his past and the fear of discovery.
A native of Cork, Crowley worked extensively as a theatre director before making his feature film debut four years ago with the darkly comic Dublin drama, Intermission, starring Cillian Murphy.