The Film Makers

It’s not yet dark was written and directed by Frankie Fenton, produced by Lesley McKimm and Kathryn Kennedy and is based on the book by Simon Fitzmaurice

 

Frankie Fenton

Writer / Director

Frankie Fenton is an award winning Irish Film and TV Director/Producer specializing in documentary film. Frankie graduated with an honors degree in anthropology and sociology before completing a master’s of film and TV at Dublin City University.  His directorial debut is the award winning feature documentary It’s Not Yet Dark, narrated by Colin Farrell and premiering at the Sundance Film Festival 2017. It is produced by Kennedy Films and Newgrange Pictures. Frankie is also in post production on “The Good Reactor” an environmental feature documentary about controversial ways to solve the coming global energy crisis.

 

Kathryn Kennedy

Producer

www.kennedyfilms.net

Winner of the ADIFF Discovery award 2016 and the Bingham Ray New Talent award 2015, Kathryn Kennedy is a creative Irish Producer with her company Kennedy Films, and a member of ACE (Ateliers du Cinema Européen).

Kennedy Films’ first feature is 8-time IFTA nominated, My Name is Emily (2015), with writer/director Simon Fitzmaurice, producing together with Lesley McKimm of Newgrange Pictures. The film is a world-first as Director Simon Fitzmaurice is physically paralysed with Motor Neuron Disease (ALS), he wrote and directed the entire film solely with his eyes and Tobii eye gaze technology.

My Name is Emily is a teenage love story and a road movie, starring Evanna Lynch (Harry Potter) and Michael Smiley (Kill List, A Field in England). It won Best Cinematography at the Galway Film Fleadh, the Youth Film Award at Internationales Filmfestival SCHLINGEL, the Newport Beach Achievement Award for Acting, the Victoria Texas Festival Jury Prize for Best Actress and was also nominated for 8 Irish Film and Television Awards. The London Screenwriter’s festival presented the Director with a lifetime achievement award for the film. My Name is Emily had its North American Premiere at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival 2015 and screened at many international festivals. It is due to be released throughout the United States in February 2017.

Kennedy’s first feature documentary It’s Not Yet Dark, directed by Frankie Fenton is based on the best-selling book of the same name written by Simon Fitzmaurice and the film is narrated by Colin Farrell. It won Best Documentary and Best Cinematography at the Galway Film Fleadh 2016, and was selected for International Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2017.

In 2016 Kathryn Kennedy produced The Belly of the Whale alongside Rory Dungan for Fastnet Films. Directed by Morgan Bushe and starring Lewis MacDougall (A Monster’s Call), Pat Shortt (Calvary, The Guard), it is due for completion in 2017.

Kathryn has an MA in Screenwriting, a BA in Film and has represented Ireland at Producers Labs in Rotterdam and Toronto. Currently Kennedy has two fiction films in development with the Irish Film Board, The Indecents by David Turpin (The Lodgers), and In Future by Kevin Lehane (Grabbers).

Lesley McKimm

Producer

www.newgrangepictures.com

Lesley McKimm has been working in film and television since 1991. She is co-managing director of Newgrange Pictures, which she runs with fellow producer Jackie Larkin, together they produce feature films, documentaries and tv drama for the international marketplace.

Feature films produced at Newgrange include the upcoming My Name is Emily (starring Evanna Lynch and Michael Smiley), Stella Days (starring Martin Sheen, Stephen Rea, Marcella Plunkett, directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan) which was nominated for 9 IFTAS,  Happy Ever Afters, starring Golden Globe winter Sally Hawkins & Tom Riley which was released theatrically by Disney in Ireland, Verve in the UK, Haut et Court in France, Lucky Red in Italy & Senator in Germany, and Kings starring Colm Meaney, dir Tom Collins which was Ireland’s first ever submission to the foreign language Academy Awards.

Newgrange also acts as co-producers on a number of European films – including the upcoming Absolution (Dir Petri Kotwica, starring Laura Birn),  A Thousand Times Goodnight, with Paradox Films in Norway and starring Juliette Binoche and Nikolai Koster Waldau., Call Girl (director Mikael Marcimain, producer Mimmi Spang) for Garage Film in Sweden which won the Fipresci prize in Toronto in 2012, and the German-Austrian film Kill Daddy, Goodnight (directed by the late Michael Glawogger) which had it’s world premier at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009. They are currently co-producing two more films with Paradox, The Last King (Dir Nils Gaup) and The King’s Choice (dir Erik Poppe). She is graduate of EAVE 1998 and the Media Business School 2002 and served on the board of the Irish Film Board from 2005 to the end of 2012.