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FESTIVALS Ireland

President dies in Cork

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The 51st Cork Film Festival will open October 8 with the screening of Gabriel Range’s controversial film Death of a President [+see also:
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, winner of the FIPRESCI Critics Award in Toronto last month.

The fictional documentary uses the central premise of the assassination of George W. Bush to explore what might happen to America if such an event were to occur and the effects of the war on terror on the US.

Mixing archive footage with fictional elements, the 90-minute film was a huge hit at the last Toronto International Film Festival, where it was sold to several international distributors, including the Indie Circle cooperative for five European territories (A Film in the Netherlands, Lucky Red in Italy, Haut et Court in France, Frenetic Films in Switzerland and Cineart in Belgium). Wild Bunch is handling international sales on the remaining territories (excluding North America, Australia and Japan).

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The film was produced in the UK by Range, Simon Finch and Ed Guiney for Borough Film, Film Four, and World Pictures. Channel Four’s satellite channel More4 will broadcast it on October 9, just after its screening in Cork.

Festival director Mick Hannigan said: “We are delighted to have secured the European premiere of Death of a President. This is urgent, important cinema, raising vital questions about politics and the mass media, about liberty and democracy. It confirms the importance of cinema as a means of making sense of the world”.

The film’s Irish producer Guiney will attend the screening along with Range and co-writer/co-producer Finch.

The festival will close on October 15 with the screening of Sophie Coppola’s Marie-Antoinette. In between, the programme will include seven other gala screenings, 40 shorts programmes, tributes to Bill Morrison and Swedish filmmaker Jens Jonsson and a showcase of past winners of the EFA Short Film Awards-Prix UIP.

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