Irish Abroad: Lenny Abrahamson’s Room added to Vancouver International Film Festival

The 34th Vancouver Film Festival is really focusing on Irish film in this year’s programme. Not content with opening with John Crowley’s Brooklyn, the festival has now added Lenny Abrahamson’s festival magnet Room to its line-up. This is on top of the previously announced Irish titles, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, Aoife Kelleher’s One Million Dubliners, and Pat Murphy’s Tana Bana.

Room sees Emma O’Donoghue adapt 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.

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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).

The 34th VIFF includes 355 films from 70 countries this year, featuring 32 world premieres, 33 North American premieres, and 53 Canadian premieres. Author and screenwriter O’Donoghue will attend the Vancouver screening on September 28th. The festival runs September 24th to October 9th.

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.