Irish Abroad: Stephen Fingleton’s The Survivalist to debut at Tribeca

The Tribeca Film Festival has announced the first crop of films for the 2015 festival, and among the 64 world premieres will be Northern Ireland director Stephen Fingleton’s debut feature, The Survivalist, which plays in the World Narrative competition strand. The festival runs April 15th to 26th in New York.

The film is a dystopian thriller set in a time of starvation, where a lone man lives off a small plot of land hidden deep in forest, protecting his crop from intruders with his shotgun and improvised traps. But the long years alone have taken their toll on him, and he is beginning to lose his grip on reality.

The film stars Irish actors Barry Ward (Jimmy’s Hall), Martin McCann (’71), Andrew Simpson (Good Vibrations), and Olwen Fouere (This Must be the Place), as well as Mia Goth (Nymphomaniac).

Derry native Fingleton was shortlisted for Oscar with his most recent short film SLR, and developed the script through Northern Ireland Screen’s New Talent Focus scheme. Wayne Marc Godfrey, Robert Jones and David Gilbery produced and financed the film through The Fyzz Facility, with support from NI Screen and the BFI. German distributors K5 Film has already acquired international rights.