Tribeca Debut for Irish Films

"People aren't used to seeing the Irish male portrayed in this way. We highlighted the drinking aspect of his life too. In Ireland there's not a lot of discussion about that. But we portrayed his drinking in a negative light."

In Eden, booze isn't so much a benign social pastime as a cheaper form of anti-depressant. Billy uses it to self-medicate, to keep the lid on, to escape. That in itself represents a departure in Irish filmmaking on the issue.

Says Recks, "Going out with the lads and getting drunk is rarely portrayed negatively in Irish film or in society. But there is a flipside and we explore it in the film. I think some audience members weren't comfortable with the results.:

Recks admits that he was thrilled to hear that the Tribeca Film Festival was picking up Eden for its American premiere. "It has no big stars, no name, and so to get it shown here at the festival raises its profile. We were delighted to have been selected."

Throughout Eden Recks and O'Brien maneuver the emotional complexities of their painfully recognizable Irish characters, focusing on the little details of their daily lives and giving equal footing to both their commendable and devastating capacities for good and ill.

Recks' skilled eye frames every scene with masterful precision, and O'Brien naturally transfers his material from stage to screen with a rare facility, keeping its original depth intact.

But it's the powerful performances by actors Aidan Kelly and Eileen Walsh that breathe life into the film from start to finish. Eden, like marriage itself, reveals how sometimes the little things matter most.

Mister Lonely, directed by Harmony Korine (controversial director of arthouse hits Kids and Gummo) is a France and Ireland co-production with a multicultural cast brought to the screen by Irish producer James Flynn.

A poetic rumination on identity and art, we follow a callow young Michael Jackson impersonator through Paris, where he performs on the streets to make ends meet. One day in a show in a retirement home, Michael falls for a beautiful Marilyn Monroe look-alike who suggests he move to a commune of impersonators in the Scottish Highlands.

Reflecting on the reality of his life, he immediately says yes and joins them at the seaside castle, where he discovers everyone is preparing for the commune's first-ever gala - Abe Lincoln, Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Stooges, the Queen, the Pope, Madonna, Sammy Davis Junior, even Marilyn's daughter Shirley Temple and her possessive husband Charlie Chaplin. It's a mind blowing sequence and as theatrical as it is cinematic.

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Nster.com