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Emigrant film an Oscar nominee?

By Noreen Bowden | September 20, 2007

A film featuring the experience of Connemara emigrants in London has been nominated by an Irish jury to be put forward for the Oscars. The film, produced and directed by Tom Collins, is a bilingual Irish-English production. It is the first Irish-language film to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Kings is a heart-breaking depiction of a group of young men who leave Galway in the 1970s for London. Thirty years later, the men, in varying states of homesickness, hopelessness and addiction, meet up for the wake of the youngest of the group.

Director Collins told the BBC that it was “a universal story – it’s not just about Paddies… I know it is always dangerous to have messages in films, but I hope people will watch Kings and empathise with the whole experience of emigrants in a foreign land and how hard it is for them to find their way home.”

The film has already won Ireland’s Directors Finders Series; it will be screened in Los Angeles on 28 September to an audience of potential US distributors.

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