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Tale of Irish in London to be shown at Cannes
By Louise Jury, Evening Standard 11.05.07
Surprisingly universal: Tom Collins's film Kings tells the story of immigrants looking for work in London
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A film about Irish immigrants in Kilburn is to be unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival.
Kings has been adapted from Jimmy Murphy's play The Kings Of The Kilburn High Road, which was a hit at the Tricycle Theatre six years ago.
Irish film-maker Tom Collins has turned it into a £2.5 million project starring Colm Meaney, best known for playing Miles O'Brien in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine.
In Kings, Meaney plays Joe, one of six men who come to London looking for work in the Seventies.
Thirty years later the men are reunited for the funeral of a friend who has died in tragic circumstances.
Collins, who grew up in Donegal, said the story of what happened to Irishmen who left home to seek their fortune in England was one he knew well from his youth.
He said: "Our aim was to make a ' foreign' film in England because I'm no longer sure England as we knew it exists.
"Our characters still talk in Irish in an attempt to accentuate their personal and national bond and their language is, to them, their last act of solidarity.
"This is an untold story of immigration and loneliness which continues today with migrants from Lithuania, Poland and China."
The director said it was an "amazing night" when he saw Kings Of The Kilburn High Road at the Tricycle, as what he saw on stage mirrored the lives of so many people in the audience.
"It's surprisingly universal," he said. "It's a little aspect of London life that is often forgotten; I hope people are interested."
Meaney said he was attracted to Kings because he was fascinated by the idea of a bilingual feature film - even though he was probably the least-proficient Gaelic speaker in the cast.
"It was a challenge for me but one that I was delighted to have a go at," he said.
"It's a great cast. They have done a wonderful job. You know there is great understanding there and I think it is, sort of, an affection for these characters that they have all brought to it."
As well as his TV work, Meaney has appeared in films including The Commitments and Con Air. He is currently on Broadway in The Old Vic's transfer of A Moon For The Misbegotten.
Although some scenes in Kings were filmed in Connemara, Galway, most of the movie was shot either in Kilburn or a pub in Acton.
It will be screened to potential distributors in the international sellers' market at the Cannes Film Festival, which begins next week.
• Channel 4 is to screen a new drama based on real-life homophobic crimes. Clapham Junction, which stars Paul Nicholls and Rupert Graves, is being filmed in locations including Battersea, Vauxhall and Clapham Common.
Writer Kevin Elyot said the film exposed a previously hidden scale of anti-gay prejudice and violence in contemporary London.
"While there seems to be a greater acceptance of gays in society - ageofconsent equality, civil partnerships, media visibility - homophobic violence has not disappeared," said the Olivier award-winner.
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