Element Pictures’ ‘The Guard’ has been selected to screen at the 61st Berlinale Film Festival. The feature was announced as one of 50 films shortlisted to screen as part of the event’s Panorama section. The film will show at Berlin following its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
‘The Guard’ was selected to screen in the Panorama section of the Berlinale festival after visited Asia, North and South America and many European countries to view and select films. Thus far 24 features of the final 50 have been chosen.
The Berlinale festival is recognised as one of the most important dates on the international film industry’s calendar and enjoys one of the largest film festival audiences in the world. As is laid out in the festival’s guidelines, features that screen in the event’s Panorama section ”Must provide lively insight into the creations of world cinema during the so-called post-crisis era. “
‘The Guard’, written and directed by John Michael McDonagh (Ned Kelly), sees Emmy and IFTA winner Brendan Gleeson (Into the Storm) playing an unorthodox Irish policeman who joins forces with Don Cheadle’s straitlaced FBI agent in a bid to take on an international drug-smuggling gang. The film’s other Irish acting talents include IFTA winners Liam Cunningham (Hunger), Fionnula Flanagan (Lost, Transamerica), Pat Shortt (Garage) and David Wilmot (Intermission, The Clinic).
'The Guard' is an Irish/UK co-production, backed by The Irish Film Board and section 481 as well as International Financiers. It is produced by Chris Clark and Flora Fernandez Marengo for Reprisal Films and Ed Guiney (Garage) and Andrew Lowe (The Wind that Shakes the Barley) for Element Pictures.
‘The Guard’ will receive an Irish theatrical release later this year through Element Pictures Distribution. The 2011 Berlinale event will run in Berlin from February 10th to 20th 2011. For a full list of projects screening in the Panorama category visit http://www.berlinale.de/en/presse/pressemitteilungen/alle/Alle-Detail_7764.html#7764
