Dark Lies the Island
Photo credit: Patrick Redmond

#IrishFilm: Ian FitzGibbon’s Dark Lies the Island gets international sales deal

Ian FitzGibbon’s recently wrapped Irish feature Dark Lies the Island has secured an international sales deal with Independent, who will present the film to potential buyers.

Dark Lies the Island has a script from Kevin Barry, based on characters from his short story collection of the same name. Dark Lies The Island is a deliciously dark comedy that rips with violent tension. Set in a small Irish town and unfolding over the course of one week, a long-standing family feud comes to a head and forces the men to face the truth.

The film is directed by FitzGibbon (Death of a Superhero, Perrier’s Bounty), who along with Barry and Grand Pictures producer Michael Garland gave us the moving short film Breakfast Wine. That short was an adaptation of Barry’s story from his Rooney Prize for Irish Literature-winning collection There Are Little Kingdoms. Here Garland produces with Catherine Magee.

The cast includes Peter Coonan (Penance, Love/Hate), Pat Shortt (The Flag, Twice Shy), Moe Dunford (Handsome Devil, Patrick’s Day), Charlie Murphy (Philomena, Rebellion), Tommy Tiernan (Derry Girls, Father Ted), John Quinn (Black ’47, Michael Inside) and Jana Mohieden. Cathal Watters (Viva, Handsome Devil) is DoP, with Stephen O’Connell as Editor, Jeffrey Sherriff (In Fear. Damned) as Production Designer, Conor O’Carroll (Moone Boy, Amber) as Location Manager, Louise Kiely as Casting Director, and Leonie Prendergast (The Man Who Invented Christmas, Pilgrimage)as costume designer.

Dark Lies the Island is a Grand Pictures production, supported by Bord Scannán na hÉireann/Irish Film Board, RTÉ, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Quickfire (UK), Egg Studios Ltd, and Section 481. Production wrapped in Wicklow and Roscommon earlier this month.

It’s been a pleasure to produce Kevin’s debut feature as a screenwriter. He brings a new language, vivacity, and tone to the realm of the small-town Irish drama. He is without doubt contemporary Irish literature’s “Neo-Flann” and one of the most accomplished and unique current international literary voices.
Michael Garland, Producer

Kevin gifted to us a dark and wickedly funny script which our superb cast relished. The drama is centred on one particular family, the Mannions, and ripples with family strife and the psychology of fear.
Ian FitzGibbon, Director 

Meet the Mannions and let their wicked shenanigans subvert all your bucolic expectations of a family story set in small town Ireland. This is superb pitch black comedy writing combined with a hugely respected director and the best Irish ensemble cast in recent film history, and will be up there with the dark Irish comedies that audiences around the world have come to love.
Andrew Orr, Managing Director – Independent


If you’re going to get involved with men in the town of Dromord, they might as well be Mannions – and Sara is involved with them up to her neck.

She’s married to Daddy Mannion, who is more than 20 years her senior and who more or less owns and runs the town. But her first love is his estranged son, Doggy Mannion, who is by now a criminal recluse living in the woods outside the town. Then there’s the younger brother, Martin Mannion, a small-town Lothario and failing chicken farmer, and yes, Sara has just got involved with him too.

As a result of this tangled erotic web, jealousy is rife in Dromord, and it’s flinging out its spears in all directions. The Mannion men have been set at each other, their long truce cannot hold, and serious violence is threatened – will we get through the next few days without bloodshed?