Sky has released the official trailer for Dance First, a Samuel Beckett biopic starring Gabriel Byrne as Beckett. The cast includes Aidan Gillen, Fionn O’Shea, and Bronagh Gallagher.
Dance First stars Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Hereditary) and Fionn O’Shea (Handsome Devil, Normal People) as Samuel Beckett, and Aidan Gillen (Barber, The Dark Knight Rises) as James Joyce.
The film will explore many aspects of Beckett’s life: Parisian bon vivant, World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband, and recluse.
The cast also includes Bronagh Gallagher (The Commitments, Pulp Fiction) as Nora Barnacle, Maxine Peake (The Theory of Everything, Black Mirror) as Barbara Bray, Barry O'Connor (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Game of Thrones) as William Beckett, Lisa Dwyer Hogg as May Beckett (The Fall), Caroline Boulton (Infinity Pool) as Sylvia Beach, and Gráinne Good (The Citadel) as Lucia Joyce Sandrine Bonnaire, winner of two Césars and a Volpi Cup from the 1995 Venice Festival for Claude Chabrol’s The Ceremony, plays Beckett’s wife, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil.
Dance First is directed by James Marsh (The Theory of Everything, Man on Wire) and written by Neil Forsyth (Guilt, The Gold). Dance First is a Belgium/UK/Hungary co-production, and was developed with Sky Arts. It is produced by Michael Livingstone and Tom Thostrup for 2LE Media, and Viktória Petrányi for Hungary’s Proton Cinema (Pieces of a Woman, Midsommar). It is a co-production of Proton Cinema, Umedia, and Constellation Production.
Dance First will have its World Premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival, on September 30th.
