Reel News

The 15th Dublin Film Festival announced on Wednesday that it has a new title sponsor, Miller Genuine Draft, for the event which runs from April 6th to 16th. The festival has appointed a new manager, Joy Giovanni, joining the recently appointed programme director, Paul Taylor, and Aine O'Halloran, who takes up the new position of marketing director. Taylor announced a number of confirmed movies including the Canadian Rollercoaster, the Danish Bloody Angels and the American road movie, Drowning On Dry Land. "We're also building a distinctly strong French presence under the festival umbrella and we'll certainly be doing justice to Hollywood this year with films under negotiation from the likes of Rob Reiner, Tim Robbins, Lawrence Kasdan, Wes Craven, Sofia Coppola and Brian De Palma," Taylor said. "It looks as though we're going to be privileged to act as launch pad for such eagerly-awaited titles as Pat Murphy's Nora and Vinny Murphy's Accelerator."

After a dismal summer of inactivity for production in Ireland, no less than six movies are shooting here at present:

- Barry Levinson, the Oscar-winning director of Rain Man, is filming An Everlasting Piece, featuring Barry McEvoy, who also wrote the screenplay, and Brian F. O'Byrne as barbers who secure a hairpeiece franchise in 1980s Belfast. Anna Friel co-stars.

- Peter McDonald and Flora Montgomery take the leading roles in Kieron J. Walsh's When Brendan Met Trudy, a romantic comedy based on an original screenplay by Roddy Doyle.

- Shawn Hatosy, who features impressively in the current release, Anywhere But Here, plays the teenage Brendan Behan in Peter Sheridan's film of The Borstal Boy, which also features Michael York, Ian McElhinney, Danny Dyer and Luke Griffin.

- Pete Postlethwaite plays a Dublin bread delivery man who turns into a rat in Steve Barron's film, Rat, which also features Imelda Staunton, Frank Kelly and Peter Caffrey.

- Cillian Murphy, Tricia Vessey and Jonathan Jackson are joined by Stephen Rea and Gerard McSorley in the cast of a love story set in a medical centre dealing with young people at risk of suicide. The film, directed by John Carney, has the working title, The Smiling Suicide Club

- In Dudi Appleton's The Most Fertile Man in Ireland, Kris Marshall plays a 24-year-old Belfast man whose life is changed when it's discovered that he has the highest sperm count in the country. The cast also includes James Nesbitt and Bronagh Gallagher.

The new Neil Jordan film, The End of the Affair, opened in the US last weekend to some of the most enthusiastic reviews of Jordan's career. The film, which is due here on February 4th, stars Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore with Jordan regulars Stephen Rea and Ian Hart.

In Variety Emmanuel Levy wrote: "Fans of Graham Greene's densely textured, morally ambiguous and ironic novels will relish Neil Jordan's brilliant version of The End of the Affair, Greene's most complex, most autobiographical, and arguably finest novel, previously brought to the screen unsatisfactorily by Edward Dmytryk in 1955." It is, Levy says, "a faithful adaptation that captures the haunting spirit and religious nature of the novel" and that Jordan turns it into "a highly cinematic, truly modern and universal experience". Describing Jordan's film as "intoxicating", New York Times chief critic Janet Maslin said, "It is also the best and most graceful Greene adaptation since The Third Man."

Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother deservedly swept the board at last Saturday's presentation of the 12th annual European Film Awards in Berlin. It was named European Film of the Year, while its star, Cecilia Roth, was voted best actress of the year and Almodovar received the People's Choice Award for best European director. Ralph Fiennes was named actor of the year for Istvan Szabo's Sunshine, for which writer-director Szabo and co-writer Israel Horovitz received the screenwriter of the year award. Lajos Koltai won the cinematography prize for his work on both Sunshine and Giuseppe Tornatore's The Legend of 1900.

The best documentary award went to Wim Wenders for The Buena Vista Social Club. The Screen International Award for a non-European film went to David Lynch for The Straight Story. The French film, Adieu, plancher des vaches, directed by Otar Iosseliani, won the European critics' award.

Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones won the People's Choice Awards for European actor and actress for Entrapment. Tim Roth, took the European Discovery-Fassbinder Award for his directing debut, The War Zone.

Antonio Banderas and Roman Polanski were awarded European achievement in world cinema awards, while composer Ennio Morricone was presented with the European Film Academy lifetime achievement award.