Ireland Selects 'Kings' For Foreign Language Oscars Nomination

'Kings' directed by Tom Collins and starring Colm Meaney, has been selected as Ireland's entry for best foreign-language film at next year's Academy Awards.
This is the first time an Irish-language movie has been entered in the Oscar race. Kings is adapted from Jimmy Murphy's play "Kings of the Kilburn High Road," about Gaelic-speaking Irish labourers searching for an identity in London.
The film follows the story of a group of six young men who leave their homes in the West of Ireland in the mid 1970's to go to England in the hope of making their fortunes and returning home. Thirty years later only one of them makes it home - but does so in a coffin. The five remaining friends reunite at his wake and face up to the reality of their alienation as long term emigrants who have no longer have any real place to call home.
The film had its world premiere at the Galway Film Fleah in July, and screened at the Toronto Film Festival's Contemporary World Cinema section.
Kings will also be showcased in LA in September to an audience of American distributors, as part of the Director's Finders Series with a view to securing a US distribution deal for the film.
Kings was produced by Newgrange Pictures with finance from Bord Scannan na hEireann/the Irish Film Board, Northern Ireland Screen, BCI and TG4. High Point are handling international sales.
The film will be released in Irish cinemas on September 21st by Newgrange Pictures.
(SP)