HAVING ENTHRALLED Irish television viewers with his Olympic bouts that earned him a bronze medal, Darren Sutherland moves to the big screen with the film Saviours, which will be released at Irish cinemas towards the end of next month.
Sutherland, who returns home this evening with fellow boxing medallists Kenny Egan and Paddy Barnes, is one of three young boxers featured in Saviours.
The film is a documentary observing their progress in training at St Saviour's Olympic Boxing Academy in inner-city Dublin.
It addresses Sutherland's upbringing in Dublin, where he was born, and his father's native Caribbean island, St Vincent, where the boy lived for four years, and his return to Dublin, where he took up boxing at the age of 15 at a club in Blanchardstown.
The film also focuses on how he juggled his boxing training with his studies at Dublin City University.
Saviourscharts the dilemma of his fellow boxer Abdul Hussein, a young asylum seeker from Ghana, as he struggles to be allowed to stay in Ireland.
It also deals with Dean Murphy, who grew up around the corner from the St Saviour's gym and became Irish intermediate lightweight champion in 2004.
The documentary was filmed over two years and with no budget by co-directors Ross Whitaker and Liam Nolan.
The documentary has been well received on the film festival circuit at home and abroad. It was described by the Chicago Tribuneas "the best in bare-bones, small-scale film-making" and "proof that when it comes to making smart movies, everything else matters more than money".