Chris O’Dowd and Jane Fonda to play Niall O’Dowd and Jean Kennedy Smith in peace process drama
It has emerged, in advance of the upcoming Cannes film festival, that Terry George, screenwriter of In the Name of the Father, is to write and direct a star-studded film about the Northern Ireland peace process.
As long ago as 2021 Variety reported that George, who won an Oscar in 2012 for the short film The Shore, was planning a TV series about the negotiations. Deadline now reports that Jane Fonda, Ciarán Hinds, John C Reilly and Chris O’Dowd will star in a film, titled Ceasefire, to shoot later this year in Ireland.
Bankside Films, a prominent UK distributor, will be handling sales at the Cannes film market, a vast cinema bazaar in the bowels of the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. Fine Point Films, based in Belfast, and Wildcard, a busy Dublin company, are named as producers.
Ceasefire focuses on the activities of the veteran Irish-American journalist Niall O’Dowd. The producers note that, in their film, O’Dowd “gambles everything to broker a secret back channel between the IRA … and a wary Clinton administration.”
Born in Tipperary, O’Dowd, after moving to the United States, founded the Irish Voice newspaper and Irish America magazine. In 2009 he founded Irish Central, an online companion to those publications.
The cast of Ceasefire could hardly be more impressive. Chris O’Dowd, the versatile comic actor from Co Roscommon, stars as his namesake Niall. Fonda, an octogenarian legend, will play Jean Kennedy Smith, US ambassador to Ireland, sister of John F Kennedy and key representative of President Bill Clinton.
Fonda – daughter of Henry Fonda, brother of Peter Fonda, aunt of Bridget Fonda – will surely understand what it means to be part of an American dynasty.
Reilly is Bruce Morrison, the committed Irish-American congressman famous for the “Morrison visa” that proved helpful to Irish citizens wishing to emigrate to the US.
Hinds is to play the late businessman Bill Flynn.
“We are very excited about this production with world-class talent, bringing an incredible real life story to screen,” Patrick O’Neill, managing director of Wildcard, tells The Irish Times.
Terry George, from Belfast, broke through as screenwriter and assistant director on Jim Sheridan’s In The Name of the Father, from 1993. He later directed Helen Mirren in Some Mother’s Son, a story of the 1981 hunger strikes. In 2003 he secured an Oscar nomination for the harrowing African drama Hotel Rwanda.
“Ceasefire is about the fragile, dangerous, often invisible work required to end conflict,” George told Deadline. “It’s about the belief that dialogue can triumph over violence. It’s a message and a story that is dramatic, moving and vital. I am honoured to tell it.”
Cannes film festival kicks off in the south of France on Tuesday, May 12th. Among the titles premiering at the event will be Alexander Murphy’s Tin Castle, a documentary about Irish Travellers that plays in the Critics’ Week strand.
David Turpin’s Ancestors, a complex Irish drama starring Éanna Hardwicke, Jessica Reynolds and Christina Hendricks, will be highlighted in the Great 8 showcase, the British Film Institute and British Council’s shop window for first-time and emerging film-makers.
