Fastnet Films and Wildcard Distribution have announced that filming has started on Black ’47 starring multi-award winning actor Hugo Weaving (Hacksaw Ridge, the Lord of the Rings, Matrix and Transformers franchises) and Jim Broadbent, an Oscar®winner for his performance in Richard Eyre’s Iris and recently seen in Brooklyn, The Lady in the Van, the Bridget Jones trilogy and Paddington. The eight-week shoot is taking place in Connemara, Kildare and Wicklow.
Black ’47 sees Weaving and Broadbent joined by an all-star cast. James Frecheville arrived internationally with his lead performance in the critically acclaimed hit Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom and has since starred in The Drop with Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace and I.T. with Pierce Brosnan and Anna Friel. The prolific Irish screen and stage actor Stephen Rea, who was Oscar®-nominated for The Crying Game and is a BAFTA-winner for the hit TV series The Honourable Woman, has also appeared in major feature films Underworld: The Awakening and V for Vendetta. Freddie Fox is soon to be seen in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and starred in Paul McGuigan’s Victor Frankenstein with Daniel Radcliffe, Matthew Warchus’s Pride, Lone Scherfig’s The Riot Club and Paul W.S. Anderson’s The Three Musketeers. Barry Keoghan, soon to be seen in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk with Tom Hardy and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer with Nicole Kidman, was acclaimed for his performance opposite Rachel Griffiths in Rebecca Daly’s Mammal and is a former Screen International Star of Tomorrow. Irish actor Moe Dunford is best known for Patrick’s Day in which he co-starred with Kerry Fox and the TV series Vikings.
It’s 1847 and Ireland is in the grip of the Great Famine that has ravaged the country for two long years. Feeney, a hardened Irish Ranger who has been fighting for the British Army abroad, abandons his post to return home and reunite with his estranged family. He’s seen more than his share of horrors, but nothing prepares him for the famine’s hopeless destruction of his homeland that has brutalised his people and where there seems to be no law and order. He discovers his mother starved to death and his brother hanged by the brutal hand of the English. With little else to live for, he sets a destructive path to avenge his family. Hannah, an ageing British soldier and famed tracker of deserters, is sent to stop Feeney before he can further stoke the fires of revolution. But Hannah and Feeney are old army comrades, forged by their time fighting together. Personal bonds and shifting allegiances cause both men to question their motives, as they are tested to the limit by the hellish landscape of ‘The Great Hunger’.
Black ’47, is directed by Lance Daly one of Ireland’s most acclaimed directors whose previous films include Life’s a Breeze which premiered at Toronto Film Festival. His breakout feature Kisses was named the Best Feature Film at the Galway Film Fleadh, Foyle and Miami film festivals, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and the Golden Leopard at Locarno. It became the highest grossing Irish film of the year and Lance picked up Best Director at the IFTA’s. Lance was winner of the Galway Film Fleadh’s Bingham Ray New Talent Award (2013).
The screenplay is written by PJ Dillon (co-writer of Rewind and Director of Photography on films Strangerland, The Runway and TV’s Game of Thrones), Pierce Ryan (Standby), Eugene O’Brien (The Flag, Eden, Red Rock) and Lance Daly (Life’s a Breeze, Kisses).
Black ’47 is produced by Macdara Kelleher whose credits include Strangerland starring Nicole Kidman, Lance Daly’s Kisses, What If starring Daniel Radcliffe, Urszula Antoniak’s Nothing Personal, and Rebecca Daly’s The Other Side of Sleep. Kelleher recently produced Rebecca Daly’s Mammal with Rachel Griffiths and is currently co-producing The Professor and the Madman with Mel Gibson and Sean Penn. He is co-founder of Dublin-based Fastnet Films with Lance Daly and Morgan Bushe. Also producing Black ’47 are Tim O’Hair ,whose producing credits include Tom Tykwer’s A Hologram for the King with Tom Hanks, and as executive producer, Paul Haggis’s Third Person with Liam Neeson; Arcadiy Golubovich, also a producer on A Hologram for the King, executive producer of Sarik Andreasyan’s American Heist with Hayden Christensen and Adrian Brody, Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes with Andrew Garfield and Third Person; and Jonathan Loughran, producer of Holidays, associate producer of What If. Jani Thilges of Samsa Films (Irina Palm) serves as co-producer.
Black ’47 is financed by Primemeridian Entertainment, the Irish Film Board, the Luxembourg Film Fund, Wildcard Distribution, BAI, TV3, Eurimages, Umedia, Samsa Films and Fastnet Films. Altitude Film Entertainment is handling the international sales, with CAA is handling the North American sale.