Projects in categories: Fiction

Synopsis

Rituals Of Fire began the long process to screen five years ago when writer-director Joel Aryeetey, who has been making shorts and music videos through his own company for eight years, returned from working in Africa. Aryeetey penned a story about an African-American woman (Joyce Lee) living in London who longs to move to Africa, a desire that brings her into conflict with her Ghanaian-born husband (David Dontoh), a successful architect. When his firm asks him to go to Africa to head up one of its branches, disturbing memories of his childhood begin to haunt him. Once in Africa, he sinks deeper into depression and his wife seeks help from a traditional witch doctor, thus unravelling the secret behind her husband's torment.



"The film attempts to explore the spiritual aspects of African life," says Aryeetey. "My family came to London from Ghana when I was little and some of them have quite ambivalent feelings about Africa because they feel the traditions hinder progress. On the other hand, there are a lot of black people in America who have that yearning to return to the land of their origins. I wanted to address both sides."



Shot in London and Ghana over a three-month period, the film almost fell apart when Aryeetey ran out of money half-way through the Ghanaian leg of the shoot. With 90% of his crew forced to return to London, he raised support from private companies and individuals there with whom he had worked in the past.



The film premiered at the Philadelphia Film Festival in July.

Synopsis

There is nothing unique about how Rob's day unfolds and ends in arrest. But the difference between how Rob thinks and acts is heightened when his thoughts are delivered by a seven-year-old boy.

Synopsis

Four pals in a band prepare for their first gig with disastrous results.

Synopsis

Love is eternal as long as it lasts. At the end of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet Romeo does not die; the poison he had been sold by the apothecary was cheap and was watered down. Today we find Romeo working at the checkout store that time forgot . . .

Synopsis

A young black man hesitates before leaving his former partner and moving in with his new white girlfriend. He feels trapped by the expectations, responsibilites and prejudices of the world he inhabits.

Synopsis

Room to Rent is a bitter sweet comedy about Ali, a young Egyptian screen-writer determined to succeed in London. He loves the artistic and political freedom, the colours, the music and the individualism. But Britain isn't an easy place for a foreigner to break through. No-one takes his work seriously and he has to scrape an illegal living in 'Arab' London as a waiter and Arabic voice over artist. With his student visa about to expire and a highly unsatisfactory relationship with married Vivienne, a French woman who more or less pays him to have sex, life is not easy. On the same day his visa extension is refused, a strange old blind woman accosts him on a train, plus he has a fight with his landlord and his thrown out of his lodgings. His friend Ahmed, a street wise hustler, thinks Ali should scrape together £3000 and buy a passport by entering into a fake marriage with a British woman - supplied with Ahmed if he wants to stay. With little money, a student visa and no home, Ali sees no alternative.

However, a series of relationships in different London 'rooms to rent' soon have a major impact on his future . . .
 
 
It was when writer-director Khaled El Hagar was doing voiceover work for Gillies Mackinnon's Hideous Kinky that he realised its star, Said Taghmaoui, would be an ideal lead in the film he was developing with producer Ildiko Kemeny. Taghmaoui was enthusiastic. "It's not every day that a juicy lead role for an Arabic actor comes along," he says. With Taghmaoui's name attached Kemeny was able to find a French co-producer, Marina Gefter of Paris-based IMA. StudioCanal, already co-producing Kemeny's Hotel Splendide, also came on board as sales agent.

Inspired by El Hagar's own experiences living in London, the bittersweet comedy tells the story of Egyptian writer Ali, who is struggling to stay afloat in London as his visa runs out. His only hope of staying on is to find a British woman who is willing to marry him. The trouble is fake marriages cost money, something Ali is a little short of. Finding somewhere to live is also far from straightforward. Along the way he encounters photographer Mark (Rupert Graves), an unstable young woman Linda (Juliette Lewis), whom Ali falls in love with, and ageing faith healer Miss Stevenson (Anna Massey), who thinks he is the reincarnation of her Egyptian lover.

Room To Rent is El Hagar's first English-language film. His debut feature Little Dreams screened to critical acclaim at several international festivals, including Rotterdam and Birmingham.

Synopsis

The two main characters' adventures, which range from petty theft and onwards, are captured on a stolen camera. A film for the voyeur in you.

Synopsis

When misanthrope Russell Square falls under a tube train he thinks his troubles are over. However, finding that he has fallen into a bizarre nowhere called The Gap, inhabited by an Angel called Islington, he realises that his troubles have only just begun.

Synopsis

When seven-year-old Davy is trapped inside his home with the man who nearly killed his mother, he is forced to fight back. Fuelled by fear he grabs the opportunity to retaliate with the only weapons he has at his disposal - the shiny new keys he wears around his neck.

Synopsis

Award-winning playwright Conor McPherson steps behind the camera for the first time with Saltwater, a tale of ordinary folk in extraordinary circumstances. In an out-of-season coastal town in Ireland, the local chippie is on the verge of going under. Ever since his mother's death, Frank (Peter McDonald) has been helping his father (Brian Cox) hold the fort. But dad is in hock to the local bookie and loan shark (Brendan Gleeson) so Frank takes matters into his own hands and robs the bookie. Needless to say, things don't quite go as planned.

Inspired by a dream McPherson had several years ago, the film began as a stage play called This Lime Tree Bower, which took the form of a series of monologues from the three main characters: Frank, his younger brother Joe, who feels his mother's absence the most, and Ray, a university tutor who is in love with the brothers' older sister.

McPherson then teamed up with producer Robert Walpole, who, along with his directing partner Paddy Breathnach, had turned his first screenplay, I Went Down, into an award-winning hit film. Saltwater went into production just as McPherson's acclaimed play The Weir was earning raves on Broadway in New York.

The film world-premiered in the Panorama section at the Berlin Film Festival in February where audience reaction was favourable. It had its Irish premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh in July and will open in Ireland through Buena Vista in September.

Synopsis

Frank

For Frank Beneventi - an anally retentive twenty-something who nags and fusses over his dad as if they were man and wife - Saltwater is the story of his emancipation. Desperate to rescue his father from the jaws of local loan shark Simple Simon, Frank calls upon internal resources of courage and complete stupidity to pull of an 'armed' heist which changes his life forever.


Joe

Four years after the death of their mother, Frank's younger brother Joe is still very much grieving. Of the Beneventi children, sixteen-year-old Joe feels his mother's absence the deepest. Bored and unhappy at school, he's easy prey for another lost teen: Damien Fitzgibbon, a destructive and damaged boy with his own demons. Joe is thrilled by Damien's antics. The he stumbles across his new friend having sex with an unconscious girl in a graveyard.


Ray

Ray, meanwhile, is in love with the boys' older sister Carmel Beneventi. And embroiled in a passionate fling with Debbie, a shapely blonde student with a fondness for knee-high boots. Carmel - and her family - represent a day-to-day reality that Ray's arcane university job never comes close to touching: the Beneventis are a world away from the whiny students and horny academics of his day-job. But it's not until an eminent philosopher arrives at the university and Ray has a run in with one of Debbie's desperate suitors that he has to make some hard choices about where his live is going. And who he's going to take with him.


Saltwater is the coming-of-age story of three very different men. Through a robbery, a rape and a really terrible hangover Frank, Joe and Ray learn things about themselves that they probably didn't want to know. And nothing, as they tend to say, will be the same again.

Synopsis

Joan and JD thought they had found the perfect place to live, a home by the sea on a remote shore of Northern Ireland. But their nostalgic memories of Ireland soon fade with the reality of living in a small community with traditional values. A poignant tale with a universal message.