Irish Abroad: Lenny Abrahamson’s Room to open 37th Aspen Film Festival

The 37th Aspen Film Festival, which runs September 25th to 30th, will open with Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s new film Room.

Emma O’Donoghue has adapted the story from her own best-selling novel, which is told from the perspective of a five-year-old boy, Jack, who is being held captive in a small room along with his mother. To him the room is his world, but his mother knows different having been held there for 7 years.

The film stars Brie Larson (Short Term 12, The Spectacular Now), Jacob Tremblay (The Smurfs 2, Somnia), Joan Allen (The Bourne Supremacy, Nixon) and William H. Macy (Shameless, Magnolia). Also making up the cast are Sean Bridgers (Rectify), Tom McCamus (The Samaritan) and Megan Park (What If).

Room is an Element Pictures and No Trace Camping production, in association with Telefilm Canada, Film4, and the Irish Film Board.

The film will have its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, before a US release on October 16th. Room will be released in Ireland by Element Pictures Distribution on January 29th, 2016.

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. It’s where he was born, and where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. But to Ma, it’s the prison where she’s been held for seven long years, since Old Nick abducted her when she was nineteen. Through her fierce love for her son, Ma has created a life for him in that eleven- by-eleven-foot space. But Jack’s curiosity is building alongside her own desperation—and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely.

Room is a celebration of resilience and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love enables them to survive the impossible.