‘Hell’s Pavement’, a new feature film, starring Irish actors Pauline McGlynn (Father Ted) and Conor Byrne (The Story of Tracey Beaker) will receive its London premiere on Friday, October 23rd in the Lexi Cinema.
The 90 minute film is self financed and based on the true life experiences of Galway family, the Gormans, and is helmed by Keith Gorman in his directorial debut. Keith’s mother is herself a foster mother and set up an independent fostering organisation with Keith in the UK that became the country’s number one fostering organisation. ‘Hell’s pavement’ features several Sinead O’Connor songs on its soundtrack and was shot in HD.
The director tells IFTN: “The mission, really, in making this film was to inspire other foster homes . . . my hope is that with such a high profile film the policy makers will approach us and say ‘You’ve obviously learnt some lessons so we’re going to listen to you guys.”
The film follows five years in the life of Aimee (played by newcomer, Keeki Bennetts) in the care system as she struggles through a range of foster placements and social care visits. The film hopes to challenge its audience to question how it is that so many well-intentioned people can do so much unintended damage and how it is that the £4 billion a year spent in the UK has failed to break the cycle of abuse, addiction and abandonment.
Director Keith Gorman, who is currently in negotiations with British network programmers to have the film broadcast in the UK, tells IFTN that the film, albeit set in England “raises a lot of issues that ring true in Ireland. I think it could just as easily fit an Irish setting. Obviously, then also having Sinead O’Connor’s music and two prominent Irish actors means that it would play well in Ireland and I think Irish audiences would take a lot from it, as indeed some Irish people already have.”
The ‘Hell’s Pavement’ team screened the film at the World Fostering Conference in Dublin 2009 paired with “doubly oversubscribed” workshops and was deemed a huge success by Gorman who concludes by telling IFTN “The point of this project is not just to ask questions but to find some solutions, to fix what is clearly a broken system.”
To view the ‘ Hell’s Pavement’ trailer and for more information visit www.hellspavement.com
