Irish films and themes compete at Toronto

Michael Dwyerat the Toronto Film Festival

Ireland is well represented at the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, including A Film with Me In It. Ian Fitzgibbon's black comedy- thriller, which has its North American premiere at the festival tonight, stars Dylan Moran and Mark Doherty as a dissolute scriptwriter and a struggling actor embroiled in a murder case.

Voted best Irish feature at the recent Galway Film Fleadh, Lance Daly's Kisseswill be launched at Toronto on Sunday. It features newcomers Shane Curry and Kelly O'Neill as two young Dubliners escaping their grim environment for an eventful night in the city.

Cork native John Crowley, who directed Intermissionand Boy A, will be in Toronto on Sunday for the world premiere of Is There Anybody There?,starring Michael Caine as a reluctant resident at a retirement home.

Sunday also marks the first Toronto screening of Hunger, Steve McQueen's dramatisation of the 1981 IRA hunger strike in the Maze prison, with Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands. It won the Camera d'Or at Cannes this year.

Canadian director Kari Skogland's political thriller Fifty Dead Men Walkingwill have its world premiere on Wednesday, despite the threat of legal action from Martin McGartland, whose experiences as an IRA informer in late 1980s Belfast inspired the film. It stars Jim Sturgess, Ben Kingsley, Kevin Zegers, Nathalie Press and Rose McGowan.

Pride and Glory gets release date

Completed over a year ago and apparently consigned to distribution limbo earlier this year, Pride and Gloryis finally set to have its world premiere at the Toronto festival next Tuesday evening. Gavin O'Connor's New York police drama stars Edward Norton and Colin Farrell as brothers-in-law on the NYPD force, as one is faced with a dilemma when he suspects the other of corruption.

New Line Cinema cancelled the movie's planned US release last March, prompting the director and stars to go public with their frustration and fears that the film would never be released in cinemas.

Warner Bros, which owns and has subsumed New Line, now plans to release the movie on more than 2,000 US screens on October 24th. It opens in Ireland on the same day.

Byrne tops the pecking order

In other festival news, Gabriel Byrne will receive the inaugural Gregory Peck Award for Excellence in the Arts of Film at The second Dingle Film Festival. The award is named after the late actor, who was a regular visitor to Dingle, the home of his ancestors. Peck's daughter, director Cecilia Peck will attend the festival to introduce a special screening of To Kill a Mockingbird(1962) starring her father in his most celebrated Oscar-winning performance. There will also be a screening of Barbara Kopple's documentary, A Conversation with Gregory Peck. www.dinglefilmfestival.com

Class acts and class films

The British Film Institute, which announces the 2008 London Film Festival programme next Wednesday, has organised a poll, Visions for the Future, as part of the institute's 75th birthday celebrations. The BFI asked various film folk to choose one film each to share with future generations. Among the early choices are Stalker(selected by Cate Blanchett), The Sacrifice(Juliette Binoche), Lawrence of Arabia(Roger Moore), Metropolis(Ken Russell), The Battle of Algiers(Paul Greengrass), Closely Observed Trains(Ken Loach), Kes (David Morrissey), Mississippi Burning(Bill Nighy), The Innocents(Miranda Richardson), Kind Hearts and Coronets(Terence Davies), L'Atalante(Julien Temple and David Mackenzie), Raising Arizona(Simon Pegg), and Silent Light(Michael Nyman).

Polling continues and public participation is welcomed through the voting box at the IFI in Dublin or at  www.bfi.org.uk/75

Critics select best film of 2008

Once again Fipresci, the international film critics' organisation, will field its own jury at Toronto, as it does annually at key international festivals.

Later this month, at the San Sebastian festival in Spain's Basque country, Fipresci will present its highest award, the Grand Prix, for best film of the previous year, as voted by all 242 critics who constitute its membership. The ballots are in already, and the clear winner, most deservedly, is There Will Be Blood.

QUOTE

The baddest, wildest and weirdly sweetest movie about pictures for pleasure you could ever imagine - From the Toronto programme note for Kevin Smith'sZack and Miri Make a Porno , which has its world premiere on Sunday