Martin Macdonagh: Last News

Colin Farrell wants real conversation.

As the 49th Annual Telluride Film Festival comes to a close on this Labor Day holiday, it once again could be a fest that ignites the Oscar chances of a number of films that have either had their World Premieres or North American Premieres this weekend. As part of the so-called Fall Festival Trifecta of Venice/Telluride/Toronto (the latter beginning this Thursday), this is where the six month+ awards season officially starts, even if the even longer Emmy season doesn’t conclude until a week from today.

The Banshees of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh’s return to the Venice Film Festival after 2017’s triumphant Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, had its world premiere Monday night, getting the biggest response from fest audience so far this year with a 15-minute standing ovation.

The Banshees of Inisherin.” The darkly comic fable from Martin McDonagh has a sensational debut on Monday at the Venice Film Festival where it earned a 13-minute standing ovation. That the longest and loudest reception for any film to debut on the Lido this season, at least based on the applause meter. McDonagh and stars Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Kerry Condon hugged each other throughout the ovation and walked up and down the mezzanine to the orchestra. To be fair, the ovation may have been unfairly supersized. That’s because Farrell broke with tradition by wading into the crowd to take selfies with fans and sign autographs, which only made the clapping grow louder and more sustained. At one point, actress and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, McDonagh’s partner, leaned over her chair and kissed her boyfriend as he basked in the love. The love for “The Banshees of Inisherin” was so intense, with the crowd leaping to its feet with such passion, that the film started to bleed into the red carpet debut of Olivia Wilde’s psychological thriller “Don’t Worry Darling.” Ushers at Venice had to scurry about trying to get audience members to leave the theater so the next film premiere could start.

Colin Farrell suits up sharp for the premiere of his new movie, The Banshees of Inisherin, during the 2022 Venice International Film Festival on Monday (September 5) in Venice, Italy.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge stands next to partner Martin McDonagh during the premiere of his new film, The Banshees of Inisherin, during the 2022 Venice International Film Festival on Monday (September 5) in Venice, Italy.

Playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh is up to more deliciously fiendish tricks in The Banshees of Inisherin, a simple and diabolical tale of a friendship’s end shot through with bristling humor and sudden moments of startling violence. It world premieres in competition at the Venice Film Festival Monday. Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and the small handful of supporting players make the most of the author’s vibrant prose in McDonagh’s first film since Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri five years ago.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Friendships can be as changeable and temperamental and outright dramatic as grand romances, though they tend to get a bland rap on screen — with friends, for most screenwriters, merely convenient constants, there to support protagonists through matters of supposedly more consequence. If substantial platonic relationship studies are rare, ones about men are rarer still. And if that comes down to a social convention rather than a cinematic one, that’s integral to the power and poignancy of Martin McDonagh’s searing “The Banshees of Inisherin,” a film that traces the tortured breakup between two best pals in remote rural Ireland with all the anguish and gravity of the most charged romantic melodrama — its high, unleashed emotions all the more startling in a world where men don’t speak their feelings.

Martin McDonagh is back on the Lido where he’s set to debut his latest film The Banshees of Inisherin, the first film he’s produced in his home country Ireland.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic By Peter Debruge It’s been nearly three decades since “In Bruges” writer-director Martin McDonagh decided to try his hand at writing for the theater, knocking out the first drafts of “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” — a dark comedy so violent that the actors find them slipping in all the fake blood on stage — and “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” as well as five other plays, during an unthinkably prolific nine-month span.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and Media Brendan Gleeson, currently generating Oscar buzz for his work in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” is about to move from the west coast of Ireland to the seedy streets of Gotham City. The veteran character actor is set to appear in “Joker: Folie à Deux,” Variety has confirmed, alongside Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, who play the clown prince of chaos and his main squeeze, Harley Quinn. Todd Phillips, who directed Phoenix to an Oscar in 2019’s “Joker,” returns as director. But whereas the first film played like a comic book riff on Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” the follow-up is a musical, albeit more in the vein of “A Star is Born” than “West Side Story” or “Singing in the Rain.”

EXCLUSIVE: Brendan Gleeson is set to join Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux for Warner Bros. and DC Films. Deadline recently broke the news that Zazie Beetz would be returning to reprise her role. Warner Bros. also recently announced that the film would bow on Oct. 4, 2024. Production is expected to get under way this December.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and Media Katie Sinclair has been named the new head of development at Riff Raff Entertainment, the development and production company co-founded by Oscar-nominated actor Jude Law and creative partner Ben Jackson.   She joins from Blueprint Pictures, where her credits as a development executive include Martin McDonagh’s upcoming “Banshees of Inisherin,” which is seen as a major awards season player and will screen at both the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals; “The Beautiful Game,” directed by Thea Sharrock; and Andrew Haigh’s “Strangers,” which stars Andrew Scott,  Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell. Sinclair has worked on “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” for Sony 3000 and Netflix. She has been heavily involved in sourcing and shepherding Blueprint’s slate of feature film projects. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent There aren’t many filmmakers like Florian Zeller. He’s the rare playwright given a chance to direct the big-screen adaptations of his work. John Patrick Shanley pulled that off with “Doubt,” Aaron Sorkin eventually made the transition from writing “A Few Good Men” to overseeing “Trial of the Chicago 7” and Martin McDonagh has successfully toggled between stage and screen. After that, the list gets thin.    Following the Oscar-winning success of “The Father,” Zeller has found himself in that elite company, and he’s used his newfound clout to bring another play, “The Son,” to the screen. It debuts in Venice before moving to other fall festivals and an eventual U.S. run courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics. And the stories that Zeller is choosing to spin first on stage and now on film are interconnected in many ways. They explore illness and trauma — and the resilient bonds that link families together — with emotional brutality. But Zeller believes that his work has a kind of cathartic effect.    

Clayton Davis It’s late summer, so it’s time to start talking about awards season. Cannes issued the first slate of contenders in the international feature Oscar race, and now Venice and Toronto are ready to screen another batch, which begs the question: What looks like the breakout pics from the festival circuit that should contend for kudos? More than 90 countries have been submitting films for Academy consideration for the past few years, in order to walk away with the coveted best international feature Oscar. Coming off the Cinderella story of Japan’s “Drive My Car” from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, which was also nominated for three other Oscars including best picture, it became the tenth film to be recognized for both best picture and international feature.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterFantastic Fest, a weeklong celebration of genre filmmaking, has announced the full lineup for its 2022 festival.This year’s event, taking place in Austin, Texas, from Sept. 22 through Sept. 29, will open with the world premiere of Paramount’s unsettling thriller “The Smile,” starring Sosie Bacon as a doctor whose mind begins to turn on her after she witnesses a traumatic experience involving a patient.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorThe Zurich Film Festival has unveiled the first seven titles from its Gala Premieres section, a showcase of some of the year’s hottest auteur films. The films include the star-studded drama “The Banshees of Inisherin” by Oscar-winning director Martin McDonagh, the European premiere of the German film adaptation “All Quiet on the Western Front,” directed by Edward Berger, and the world premieres of Sönke Wortmann’s “Der Nachname” and “Die Goldenen Jahre” by Barbara Kulcsar.Artistic director Christian Jungen said: “In recent years, the Zurich Film Festival has established itself as a springboard into the awards season.

The Zurich Film Festival (ZFF) has unveiled the seven titles in its Gala Premieres section showcasing auteur features with broad audience appeal and awards season potential.

The trailer for the upcoming movie The Banshees of Inisherin has been released!

“In Bruges” stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson reunite with writer-director Martin McDonagh for their latest project, “The Banshees Of Inisherin”.

EJ Panaligan editorColin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play lifelong friends, Pádraic and Colm, whose relationship reaches an abrupt impasse in the trailer for director Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin.”Set during the Irish Civil War in 1923 on the fictional island of Inisherin, the events of the film begin when Gleeson’s Colm seemingly cuts off Farrell’s Pádraic with minimal explanation, setting off an interpersonal dance between the two former friends.The upcoming film will mark the reunion of the three Irish creatives, who first worked together on the 2008 black comedy “In Bruges.” That film chronicled Farrell and Gleeson as two hitmen forced to go into hiding in Bruges, Belgium, away from their enraged boss, played by English actor Ralph Fiennes. Outside of 2017’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” McDonagh’s film efforts have included either Gleeson or Farrell, but “The Banshees of Inisherin” is the trio’s second collective collaboration.