‘Once’ director & writer John Carney has seen his latest film ‘Can a Song Save your Life?’, starring Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo, picked up for US distribution by the Weinstein Co. at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In a major success story for the Irish filmmaker, his new feature received an enthusiastic response from critics - with special praise reserved for Keira Knightley’s singing voice and the chemistry between the film’s two leads.
‘Once’ - which won the Oscar for Best Song in 2008 for ‘Falling Slowly’ – has also received a new lease of life recently as a Broadway musical, winning eight Tony awards last year including Best Musical.
‘Can a Song Save your Life?’ follows the story of a struggling musician and a music producer in New York, played by Knightley and Ruffalo respectively, who each help each other to get their lives back on track.
Hailee Steinfeld, the young Oscar-nominated star of ‘True Grit’, features as Ruffalo’s daughter, while the supporting cast also includes musical artists CeeLo Green; Mos Def; Maroon 5’s Adam Levine and actors Catherine Keener and James Corden.
The film is executive produced by Judd Apatow; produced by Anthony Bregman & Tobin Armbrust; and is an Exclusive Media and Likely Story co-production.
Among John Carney’s other screen credits are Irish films ‘The Rafters’ and ‘Zonad’, and several episodes of RTE’s ‘Bachelor’s Walk’.
Also of Irish interest at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is ‘The F Word’ – produced by Dublin’s Fastnet Films and starring Daniel Radcliffe – which received a screening and is currently being pitched to potential distributors by E One.
Fastnet’s Macdara Kelleher produced ‘The F Word’, part of which filmed in Dublin last September, with funding by the Irish Film Board.
