'Viva' is the first Oscar shortlisted foreign-language film for Ireland, as nominated by the Irish Film & Television Academy.
The team behind the hugely successful Irish feature talk to IFTN about the inspiration behind the project, the careful process of translating the script and their experience of Cuba.
‘Viva’ releases to Irish cinemas this Friday, August 19th. The project already boasts nine award nominations internationally, including the Best Film Prize at Sydney Film Festival and the Dorian Award at the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association this year.
At home the team also garnered an impressive five nominations at the 2016 IFTA Film & Drama Awards last April, including the awards for Best Film and Best Director.
Breathnach and O’Halloran tell IFTN the story of drag performer Jesus and his tumultuous relationship with his disapproving father began a decade ago, when Breathnach first saw a drag show in Cuba.
The director describes his encounter as a happy accident, during which he says, “I just fell in love with the raw, emotional power of the performances that I saw.” At this time he had also seen ‘Adam and Paul’, written by O’Halloran, and was eager to collaborate with the writer.
Breathnach revisited Cuba in the early 2000s in what he describes as, “…a kind of Irish directors’ road trip” with Kieron J. Walsh and Damien O’Donnell. During this time he honed the idea of the father and son plot. It was not until 2007 that he returned with O’Halloran to further develop the story behind the final script.
On the opportunity to work in Cuba and write such unusual characters, O'Halloran states:
“I was looking for something that was outside what I had been doing before so the idea of not writing something in Ireland—normally that would mean writing something in England or America. Then this offer of writing something strange in Cuba came along and I just thought, ‘Well, why not?’”
They tell us writing a story which was truly representative of the way of life on the island was incredibly important to the project. O’Halloran’s writing actually adopted some Irish colloquialisms to be sure the script would maintain those nuances in dialogue, once translated.
