The Black Guelph, a dark Irish crime thriller centered on Ireland’s Travellers community, has secured a U.S. release.
John Connors’ directorial debut premiered at the Oldenburg Film Festival in 2022, where it won both best film honor and the best actor for star Graham Earley. It is billed as the first film from an Irish Travellers’ director to depict the indigenous ethnocultural group, also known as Minceir, which is among the most disadvantaged and discriminated against in Western Europe.
Online film packaging and financing platform Slated.Com has acquired worldwide rights, outside Ireland, to The Black Guelph and has partnered with Entertainment Squad to release the film. Following a limited U.S. theatrical release, which kicked off Friday, March 22, the film will roll out on digital and VOD on June 25.
Earley plays Kanto, a small-time drug dealer from Dublin’s Travellers community desperate to put his life back together...
John Connors’ directorial debut premiered at the Oldenburg Film Festival in 2022, where it won both best film honor and the best actor for star Graham Earley. It is billed as the first film from an Irish Travellers’ director to depict the indigenous ethnocultural group, also known as Minceir, which is among the most disadvantaged and discriminated against in Western Europe.
Online film packaging and financing platform Slated.Com has acquired worldwide rights, outside Ireland, to The Black Guelph and has partnered with Entertainment Squad to release the film. Following a limited U.S. theatrical release, which kicked off Friday, March 22, the film will roll out on digital and VOD on June 25.
Earley plays Kanto, a small-time drug dealer from Dublin’s Travellers community desperate to put his life back together...
- 3/25/2024
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Studio Dome will release the feature theatrically in early 2024.
Shaked Berenson’s Los Angeles-based Studio Dome has acquired worldwide sales to John Connors’ Dublin Film Festival drama The Black Guelph and will commence talks with AFM buyers on Monday.
Studio Dome will release the feature theatrically in early 2024 in limited locations with significant Irish populations such as Boston, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
The Black Guelph centres on a small-time drug dealer whose long absent father returns home looking for forgiveness and reconciliation.
The cast includes Graham Earley, Lauren Larkin, Paul Roe, Barry John Kinsella, and Connors. Tiernan Williams and...
Shaked Berenson’s Los Angeles-based Studio Dome has acquired worldwide sales to John Connors’ Dublin Film Festival drama The Black Guelph and will commence talks with AFM buyers on Monday.
Studio Dome will release the feature theatrically in early 2024 in limited locations with significant Irish populations such as Boston, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
The Black Guelph centres on a small-time drug dealer whose long absent father returns home looking for forgiveness and reconciliation.
The cast includes Graham Earley, Lauren Larkin, Paul Roe, Barry John Kinsella, and Connors. Tiernan Williams and...
- 10/30/2023
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
"A fierce, authentic portrait of Ireland's underclass." Cluster Fox Films has revealed a promo trailer for an Irish indie film titled The Black Guelph, made by Irish actor / filmmaker John Connors. After premiering at the 2022 Oldenburg Film Festival last year, this is currently playing at the Dances With Film Festival now in LA, and it also played at the 2023 Dublin Film Festival earlier this year. Kanto (also spelled "Canto" in the US synopsis), a small time drug dealer trying to get off the streets whose long absent father Cormac, an industrial school survivor, returns home looking for forgiveness and reconciliation. He is forced back to the streets for help as he always has done. Graham Earley stars as Kanto, along with Paul Roe, Tony Doyle, Denise McCormack, Lauren Larkin, John Connors, Kevin Glynn, and Casey Walsh. This actually looks like it might be good - some solid footage. Very good...
- 6/27/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Irish Travellers, Ireland’s indigenous ethnic population, are rarely shown in movies. When they are — think Brad Pitt as the incomprehensible bare-knuckled boxer in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch (2000) — the depiction, says Travellers filmmaker John Connors, is “superficial and patronizing… fucking terrible and insulting to be honest.”
At the same time, the Travellers community remains among the most disadvantaged and discriminated against in Western Europe, a legacy of generations of forced assimilation and active oppression by the Irish state. Part of this includes Ireland’s industrial schools’ program, a nationwide system of reform schools for “neglected, orphaned and abandoned children” that included a large number of Travellers kids. A national inquiry into the industrial schools’ program reported, in 2009, that many children had been subjected to “systematic and sustained physical, sexual and emotional abuse” and that the institutions, most of which were run by the Catholic Church, protected the abusers.
All that...
At the same time, the Travellers community remains among the most disadvantaged and discriminated against in Western Europe, a legacy of generations of forced assimilation and active oppression by the Irish state. Part of this includes Ireland’s industrial schools’ program, a nationwide system of reform schools for “neglected, orphaned and abandoned children” that included a large number of Travellers kids. A national inquiry into the industrial schools’ program reported, in 2009, that many children had been subjected to “systematic and sustained physical, sexual and emotional abuse” and that the institutions, most of which were run by the Catholic Church, protected the abusers.
All that...
- 9/15/2022
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Click here to read the full article.
In The Black Guelph, John Connors, said to be the first filmmaker to come from the ethno-cultural group called Irish Travellers, dramatizes the blight of childhood sexual abuse, imagining a dense tapestry of hurt in which one boy’s victimization by a priest transforms into enough crime, addiction and anger over decades to wreck a small community. Intriguing characters and elements of crime fiction prevent the film from being a dour slog, but there’s not much hope to be found here, especially for victims who, due to payoffs and court-ordered silence, can never share their trauma with an outraged public.
Commercial prospects may be hurt a bit by the film’s needlessly obscure title, whose reference to 14th-century Italian history will be lost on most viewers unless they have access to producers’ notes (which also explain, kind of, the meaning of drawing...
In The Black Guelph, John Connors, said to be the first filmmaker to come from the ethno-cultural group called Irish Travellers, dramatizes the blight of childhood sexual abuse, imagining a dense tapestry of hurt in which one boy’s victimization by a priest transforms into enough crime, addiction and anger over decades to wreck a small community. Intriguing characters and elements of crime fiction prevent the film from being a dour slog, but there’s not much hope to be found here, especially for victims who, due to payoffs and court-ordered silence, can never share their trauma with an outraged public.
Commercial prospects may be hurt a bit by the film’s needlessly obscure title, whose reference to 14th-century Italian history will be lost on most viewers unless they have access to producers’ notes (which also explain, kind of, the meaning of drawing...
- 9/15/2022
- by John DeFore
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
An uneven mixture of suspense and middle-age love story, this directorial debut by Irish actor John Lynch is upgraded by the superb performances from leads John Hurt and Brenda Blethyn, who infuse their characterizations with a world-weary sensitivity and intelligence. Although a bit too low-key and schizophrenic for significant audience appeal, "Night Train" could attract some attention on the art house circuit because of the names involved and should fare well on video and cable.
The film was recently showcased in the Irish Cinema section of the Montreal World Film Festival.
Hurt plays Poole, an accountant just released from prison, where he was sent because of his work for a gangland figure. Unfortunately, the mild-mannered Poole had embezzled a quarter-million pounds from his boss, who has sent a henchman to retrieve it and exact revenge. Poole flees to Dublin, where he rents a room in a house inhabited by the busybody Mrs. Mooney (Pauline Flanagan) and her middle-age daughter Alice (Blethyn).
Poole takes a menial job at the local slaughterhouse and occupies himself by playing with his elaborate model train set. But Alice becomes increasingly intrigued with the quiet stranger living upstairs, and soon the pair, who find that they share fantasies of exotic travel, have embarked on a tentative romance.
Poole proposes a spur-of-the-moment trip to Venice, Italy, on the Orient Express, and the two happily go off together. But when he confesses the details of his past, and that the reason he wanted to go to Venice is that the money he stole is stashed there, Alice is disillusioned. She takes off on her own, while Poole must deal with his pursuers.
Although the suspense angle of the plot never really gathers steam, and a ridiculous subplot involving a cross-dressing neighbor is a needless distraction, "Night Train" succeeds because of its detailed characterizations and the insightful and highly appealing performances by the two leads, who refreshingly underplay and underglamorize their roles with a total lack of ego. Their touching portrayals of two lost souls finding love long after they ever expected to will resonate in your mind long after other, flashier thrillers have vanished from memory.
NIGHT TRAIN
J&M Entertainment
Creator: Director: John Lynch; Screenplay: Aodhan Madden; Producer: Tristan Orpen Lynch; Photography: Seamus Deasy; Editor: J. Patrick Duffner; Music: Adam Orpen Lynch. Cast: Poole: John Hurt; Alice: Brenda Blethyn; Mrs. Moonie: Pauline Flanagan. Also: Rynagh O'Grady, Peter Caffrey, Paul Roe. No MPAA rating. Color/stereo. Running time -- 92 minutes.
The film was recently showcased in the Irish Cinema section of the Montreal World Film Festival.
Hurt plays Poole, an accountant just released from prison, where he was sent because of his work for a gangland figure. Unfortunately, the mild-mannered Poole had embezzled a quarter-million pounds from his boss, who has sent a henchman to retrieve it and exact revenge. Poole flees to Dublin, where he rents a room in a house inhabited by the busybody Mrs. Mooney (Pauline Flanagan) and her middle-age daughter Alice (Blethyn).
Poole takes a menial job at the local slaughterhouse and occupies himself by playing with his elaborate model train set. But Alice becomes increasingly intrigued with the quiet stranger living upstairs, and soon the pair, who find that they share fantasies of exotic travel, have embarked on a tentative romance.
Poole proposes a spur-of-the-moment trip to Venice, Italy, on the Orient Express, and the two happily go off together. But when he confesses the details of his past, and that the reason he wanted to go to Venice is that the money he stole is stashed there, Alice is disillusioned. She takes off on her own, while Poole must deal with his pursuers.
Although the suspense angle of the plot never really gathers steam, and a ridiculous subplot involving a cross-dressing neighbor is a needless distraction, "Night Train" succeeds because of its detailed characterizations and the insightful and highly appealing performances by the two leads, who refreshingly underplay and underglamorize their roles with a total lack of ego. Their touching portrayals of two lost souls finding love long after they ever expected to will resonate in your mind long after other, flashier thrillers have vanished from memory.
NIGHT TRAIN
J&M Entertainment
Creator: Director: John Lynch; Screenplay: Aodhan Madden; Producer: Tristan Orpen Lynch; Photography: Seamus Deasy; Editor: J. Patrick Duffner; Music: Adam Orpen Lynch. Cast: Poole: John Hurt; Alice: Brenda Blethyn; Mrs. Moonie: Pauline Flanagan. Also: Rynagh O'Grady, Peter Caffrey, Paul Roe. No MPAA rating. Color/stereo. Running time -- 92 minutes.
- 9/14/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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