Mongrel Media, the Canadian distributor for Alan Gilsenan’s Canadian based Unless, has released the first trailer for the Irish co-production. The film will world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.
Unless, which is scripted by Gilsenan, is based on the award-winning and final novel from Canadian author Carol Shields. It follows a successful writer struggling to come to terms with her daughter’s decision to withdraw from the world and start pan-handling on a street corner.
Academy Award nominee Catherine Keener is in the leading role, alongside Matt Craven, Brendan Coyle, Hannah Gross, Chloe Rose, Abigail Winter, Martha Henry, and Hanna Schygulla. Gilsenan is best known for biographies The Yellow Bittern and Eliza Lynch: Queen of Paraguay.
Unless is a Canada-Ireland co-production, produced by Jennifer Kawaja and Julia Sereny of Sienna Films and Tristan Orpen Lynch and Aoife O’Sullivan of Dublin-based Subotica. Multiple IFTA award-winning editor Emer Reynolds oversaw post-production, with Celiana Cardenas as cinematographer, production design from Tim Bider, and music from Jonathan Goldsmith. The film is financed with the financial participation of the Irish Film Board, Telefilm Canada, the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC), Mongrel Media, Premiere Fund and Windmill Lane Pictures, with development funding by Super Channel.
We expect the film to be released in Ireland in early/mid 2017.