'Kings' Official Irish Selection for Best Foreign Language

The Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) has announced that Tom Collins’s Kings, starring Colm Meaney, Donal O’Kelly and Brendan Conroy, has been officially selected by an independent IFTA jury for submission to the 80th Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Language Film category. This is the first time that an Irish language film is being submitted from Ireland. The submission and jury process is co-ordinated by the Irish Film and Television Academy. The American Academy accepts one foreign language film from each eligible country for consideration under this category and will announce their selection of five foreign language films on January 22nd 2008.

The film was shot in Belfast, London and Dublin in 2006, and tells the story of a group of young men who in the mid 1970s left the west of Ireland, bound for London, filled with ambition for a better life in a place where they could be kings. Thirty years on they meet to mark the passing of the youngest of the group. For some of them, those thirty years have been hard. The film is resoundly bleak but still is powerful viewing. It is released today so do consider it.

Also I would not be surprised if 'Once' made an appearance on a list of films which may garner a nomination come the Spring, particularly for Original Soundtrack. It has become the film that could Stateside, doing great business over there.