Irish Language Film To Make Oscar History

Directed by Tom Collins and starring Colm Meaney, Kings is Ireland’s entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category at this year's Academy Awards. It’s the first time an Irish-language movie has been entered for the coveted Oscars.

“I haven’t started working on my speech yet,” Collins laughs down the phone from Toronto, where the film has just been screened. “But it’s a fantastic honour to be even considered for something like the Oscars in terms of being among that peer group. Whatever happens, I think it will open doors for the film.”
The film is based on Jimmy Murphy’s critically acclaimed play The Kings of the Kilburn High Road, about a group of five Irish-speaking Connemara men who emigrate from Ireland, with the dream of returning having made their fortune. The film explores their search for an identity in an anonymous London; the story is centred around what happens when one of them dies and they all return home for the funeral. Though the play was written and performed originally in English, Collins decided to adapt it for the screen as an Irish-language piece.
“It was both an artistic and political decision,” he says. “I wanted this group of people to be from somewhere coherent. I wanted them to be doing something together. I also wanted something quite visual, whether it’s four men in the pub or out sailing on a Galway hooker. The collective memories of them on the boat together provide a strong visual component.”
Collins’ previous works include Bogwoman and Hush-A Bye-Baby but he is perhaps best known in these parts for his film Teenage Kicks – The Undertones, a documentary on Derry’s finest which also featured the late John Peel. A self-taught Irish speaker, this is his first foray into Irish-language film.
“There’s this trepidation on the part of a lot of people at home with the attitude ‘oh, an Irish-language film’ but I don’t see it as an Irish film as such. It’s a film about Irish people in London; I just happen to be Irish. There’s a certain amount of imperialism in English-language films compared to, say, French films. But language films do travel and it isn’t necessarily a problem with audiences if it has a universal appeal. I thought about the fact that we’ve Polish people speaking their own language in Ireland; why not have Irish people speaking Irish in London? For a lot of them, it was kind of a secret language where they could communicate directly with one another.”
Kings had its world premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh in July and has just been shown at the Toronto Film Festival in the Contemporary World Cinema section. It will be released on September 21 in Ireland by Newgrange Pictures. According to Collins, the reaction in Toronto was beyond his wildest dreams. “It got an absolutely fantastic response here and it seems to have struck a chord,” he says. “I didn’t understand that the Canadian experience was so similar to the Irish one. The film packs quite an emotional punch and there was a lot of emotion in the room when it was shown. Some people were visibly upset. There was a couple from the Caribbean who came up to me and said they identified with the theme of isolation. But I think what makes the film is that the performances are really good.”

Kings is released September 21