The Irish documentary ‘The Summit’ has won a prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

Grabbers, the new Irish comedy thriller written by Kevin Lehane and directed by Jon Wright tells the fast paced story of a small town, drink sizzled policeman (Richard Coyle) who joins forces with an incredibly straight-laced colleague (Ruth Bradley) in a battle to protect the local community from the 'tentacled, fang-jawed, barb-tongued creatures' from the deep, known as Grabbers.

Robert Redford is famous for his groundbreaking films and the boundary-pushing Sundance Film Festival, but did you know he’s just as comfortable talking about Irish poets?

Read more: Irish film ‘The Guard' a Sundance Festival hit

The Irish documentary film “Knuckle”, shown at the Sundance Film Festival, has been bought by Rough House Pictures and will be remade for HBO.

Considering he plays a corrupt Irish cop who likes to use hookers in his new movie “The Guard,” Brendan Gleeson is hoping that the police in Ireland will not give him a hard time for giving them a bad name.

    When the bigwigs of the movie industry gathered in Park City, Utah, at the end of January for the annual Sundance Film Festival, the Irish were well represented.
    Brendan Gleeson’s new film The Guard, which also stars Fionnula Flanagan, Don Cheadle and Mark Strong, opened up the festival’s World Dramatic Competition.  The Guard was directed by John Michael McDonagh – brother of acclaimed Irish playwright Martin McDonagh.
    The Guard features the always-brilliant Gleeson as a small-town Irish cop known for his bad attitude and dark humor.  His mother is dying, and he may be involved in a drug-smuggling ring, which has attracted the attention of an FBI agent (Cheadle).
    Guard producer Ed Guiney recently said: “I’m delighted that Sundance has selected The Guard as the opening film of the world competition this year. It’s the most high profile slot in one of the world’s great festivals and we cannot think of a better way to launch the film.”
    Meanwhile, Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition featured Knuckle, an intimate look at the brutal world of bare-knuckle boxing among Irish Travellers.  Travellers, of course, are the nomadic tribe of people who wander through Ireland and other countries and live by their own set of rules.
    Director Ian Palmer followed a group of Travellers for over 10 years and focuses on James, a member of a group known as the Quinn McDonaghs. James often finds himself asked to defend his clan against the rival Joyces.
    At Sundance, Knuckle was described as follows: “Disturbingly raw, yet compulsively engaging, Knuckle  offers candid access to a rarely seen, brutal world where a cycle of bloody violence seems destined to continue unabated.”
    Two Irish shorts, meanwhile, were among the 81 short films featured at Sundance. Small Change, starring Nora Jane Noone (The Magdalene Sisters), is about a bored, young Mom while the animated The External World is about a little boy learning to play the piano.

Director John Michael McDonagh’s new film The Guard, starring award winning Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, has already received a rare distinction: it will open the 2011 Sundance film festival.

"Five Minutes of Heaven," the new Irish film starring Northern Irish actors Liam Nesson and James Nesbitt, won the coveted World Cinema Directing Award and also the World Cinema Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah last weekend, an unprecedented back-to-back coup for the film's writer and director. The new film, which tracks the lives of two Irish men from the same town but from different sides of the political divide, is unlike any other on the subject, avoiding peachiness or simple solutions, and becoming all the more potent for it. One man, Alistair, played by Neeson, is a former killer; the other, Joe, played by Nesbitt, is the brother of the man he killed. One man feels that he dare not ask for forgiveness and the other man feels incapable of giving it. It's the kind of unhappy personal and political stalemate that The Troubles produced by the thousands, and its legacy has rarely been so sensitively captured. Written by Guy Hibbert (who previously wrote the film "Omagh," based on the Real IRA atrocity and its aftermath) and directed by the German filmmaker Oliver Hirschbiegel, "Five Minutes of Heaven" isn't a work of expiation or guilt, and neither does it seek a simplistic solution. It just grapples with what there is and tries to find a way forward. Trevor Groth, senior film programmer for the Sundance Film Festival told the Irish Voice, "(The wins) say a lot about the quality and craft of the film. It's extremely rare for a jury to recognize both the screenwriting and the directing. "The idea of looking at these two men's lives, where they have the opportunity to confront their past, and perhaps even to achieve a measure of reconciliation, is a fascinating scenario. That combination creates a story that is rooted in Northern Ireland's history but is relevant to everyone, because it's about the legacy of violence in any society." An award from Sundance more or less guarantees a distribution deal in the U.S. but it's not guaranteed. "I do think these awards will help," added Groth. "The good news about this film is the two actors, Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, are at the top of their games. Those caliber actors and winning these awards mean it should be coming to a theater near everyone soon."

THE Oscar winning, Tony Award nominated Irish/ English writer Martin McDonagh has lots to look forward to in the New Year. READ MORE ]]> http://www.irishcentral.com/ent/U2-Go-3D-in-Sundance-1831.html http://www.irishcentral.com/ent/U2-Go-3D-in-Sundance-1831.html Sun, 08 Mar 2009 10:01:03 PDT By:

The film - and, yes, it was produced with the latest 3D technology - is based on concert footage of the band's last tour and was shot in South America. It made its bow at the star-studded Sundance Film Festival last weekend, and all four band members donned their winter woolies to shill for the project. READ MORE ]]>