RANGING FROM the latest George Clooney movie to archival film treasures of Christy Ring at play, the details of next week’s 54th Corona Cork Film Festival were unveiled yesterday
Festival director Mick Hannigan said the festival will open with the well-received The Boys are Backstarring Clive Owen as a single father raising two young boys. Among other films will be Australian director John Hillcoat's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Roadstarring Viggo Mortensen and newcomer Kodi Smith-McPhee as a father and son wandering across a post-apocalyptic America.
Also screening is the Berlin winner London Riverwhich tells the story a Christian mother and a Muslim father who meet as they try to find their children following a bomb attack in London.
And Cork has also secured the Irish premiere of the 2009 Palme D'Or winner at Cannes, The White Ribbon, which captures life in a tiny Protestant village in Germany prior to the horrors of the first World War. George Clooney stars in Jason Reitman's rom-com, Up in the Air,as a corporate executive who spends his time travelling the country firing people while the Coen Brothers' latest offering, A Serious Man, is described as a black comedy set in the 1960s.
Also set in the 1960s is Ang Lee's comedy Taking Woodstockwhich was inspired by the true story of Elliot Tiber and his family, who inadvertently played a pivotal role in making the famed Woodstock Festival happen.
Also showing is Eamon,the feature directorial debut of Cork- born Margaret Corkery, which depicts the impact that a little boy's selfishness has on his parents' relationship and which was described at the Toronto Film Festival as "fabulously fresh and highly entertaining".
The festival teams up with Irish Film Archive to celebrate 125 years of the GAA and will screen a selection of archival films on Cork hurling including a special film on legendary hurler Christy Ring.
Also of interest to local audiences will be Mike Hannon's documentary, My Beamish Boy, about the now closed Beamish and Crawford brewery in the city and the Gabriel Byrne-narrated Butte, which looks at the Montana mining town with strong Cork links.
www.corkfilmfest.org