Toronto International Film Festival 2017

#IrishAbroad: Four more Irish films added to the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival line-up

Four more Irish films have been added to the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) line-up. David Freyne’s The Cured (formerly The Third Wave) will receive its world premiere at TIFF, screening in Special Presentation at the festival, while Rebecca Daly’s Good Favour will be presented in TIFF’s Contemporary World Cinema strand, with both films receiving their world premieres at the festival. Brian O’Malley’s The Lodgers will also debut at the world-renowned festival; premiering in the Contemporary World Cinema strand and fresh from its triumph at the Cannes Film Festival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer will screen in Special Presentations. These four Irish titles join previously announced Irish films at TIFF 2017, including the IFB-backed The Breadwinner, Mary Shelley and Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami, and Disobedience, which is produced by Element Pictures.

Featuring a stellar Irish and international cast including Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Ellen Page, David Freyne’s The Cured is produced by Rory Dungan and Rachael O’Kane at Tilted Pictures. For six years, a virus has devastated Europe, transforming people into zombie-like monsters. All is lost until a cure is found. The cure, which has a 75% success rate, restores the infected to full physical health, although the cured remember everything they did while infected. Three years into this great hope, the third wave of cured are ready for release in Ireland.

Produced by John Keville and Conor Barry of Savage Productions alongside Benoit Roland of Wrong Men, Rebecca Daly’s Good Favour follows a young man named Tom who walks out of an immense forest into the lives of a strictly devout Christian community carving out a remote existence in central Europe. As Tom is initiated into their farming life and scriptural regime, he discovers the community is suffering a crisis of faith following a devastating loss.

Brian O’Malley’s The Lodgers is a gothic ghost story set in the 1920s about orphaned twins Edward (Bill Milner) and Rachel (Charlotte Vega) who share a crumbling manor in 1920s rural Ireland – but they are not alone. They share the house with unseen entities who control them with three absolute rules. As separate fates draw them apart, the twins must face the terrible truth about their family’s ghostly tormentors. The film also features Irish talent such as Moe Dunford, Deirdre O’Kane, Roisin Murphy. The Lodgers was primarily shot in Loftus Hall in County Wexford, which is widely known as being the most haunted house in Ireland. The film is produced by Ruth Treacy and Julianne Forde of Tailored Films.

It’s a huge honour to have our gothic ghost story The Lodgers selected for the highly competitive and prestigious Toronto International Film Festival. It was always our dream to have our film premiere at an A-list international festival and we’re really excited to see how audiences and distributors respond to it.
Ruth Treacy, Producer – Tailored Films

Following a successful screening at the Cannes Film Festival, where it scooped the award for Best Screenplay, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer sees Colin Farrell starring as Steven; a charismatic surgeon forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart when the behaviour of a teenage boy (played by up-and-coming Irish actor, Barry Keoghan) he has taken under his wing takes a sinister turn. Nicole Kidman stars as the wife of Farrell’s character, in the film which is produced by Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element Pictures.

The 2017 Toronto International Film Festival takes place from 7–17 September and more information can be found here.