Screen Ireland Backs Projects From Jim Sheridan, Rebecca Lenkiewicz & Aisling Walsh In Latest Funding Round

Andreas Wiseman

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In its latest funding round, Vikings and Brooklyn backer Screen Ireland has funded new projects from six-time Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan, Ida scribe Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Maudie director Aisling Walsh.

The largest production awards of €700k went to Cowtown Pictures’ movie L.O.L.A by Andrew Legge and Rachel Carey’s comedy Cutters from O’Sullivan Productions. The former, set in 1940s England, tells the story of Thomasina, who invents a machine that can intercept broadcasts from the future.

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Movies to get development funding include Jim Sheridan projects Murphy And The Indian and Sheriff Street, Aisling Walsh project The Ballroom for Parallel Film and Malgorzata Szumowska (The Other Lamb) project A Kind Of Longing. Murphy And The Indian will follow the true story of Standing Bear, a Native American and civil rights leader who won a landmark 1879 legal case. Sheridan’s Hell’s Kitchen is producing.

The Favourite producer Element received the highest movie development award of €50k for project The Lost Children Of Tuam, which is being developed by in-demand Ida and Disobedience scribe Rebecca Lenkiewicz. The Irish town of Tuam was the location of a Catholic Mother and Baby Home which was in operation between 1925 to 1961. There was an outcry in 2017 when tests revealed that hundreds of human remains had been buried in underground chambers at the site, which is due to be excavated this year. Estimates are that almost 800 babies died at the home.

Garnering the joint-biggest award (€150k) among documentaries was Jim Sheridan’s (My Left Foot) film In Absentia, about the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a French film and TV producer who was killed while at her isolated holiday cottage in West Cork, Ireland, just days before Christmas in 1996. Sheridan has been researching the story for five years.

The organization’s largest animation awards of €300k went to Pictor Productions for Flix (aka Birdie) and Ink And Light for Stories From The Backwoods. Both projects are currently in production.

The biggest movie distribution payment of €75k went to Wildcard Distribution for comedy-horror Extra Ordinary.

TV drama development funding went to projects from director Hope Dickson Leach and Element (Legless), Jim Sheridan and Hell’s Kitchen (Singularity) and Mark O’Connor and Parallel (Darklands). The awards were published today on Screen Ireland’s website.

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