Award-winning Omagh film snaps up deals

A harrowing film dealing with the 1998 Omagh bomb has secured distribution deals in a number of countries after picking up several awards, it emerged today.

Pete Travis’s Omagh, starring Irish actor Gerard McSorley as campaigner Michael Gallagher whose son Aidan was killed in the Real IRA attack, recently scooped awards at the Toronto and San Sebastian Film Festivals.

The movie, which was screened on British and Irish television earlier this year, has secured cinema distribution deals in France, Italy, Canada, Argentina and Benelux countries.

The film has also been screened at the Dinard Film Festival in northern France, will be shown at the Flanders Film Festival and has been selected for competition at the Stockholm Film Festival.

Omagh recently won the coveted Toronto Film Festival Discovery Award decided by over 700 international film critics.

The film also went on to scoop the Best Screenplay and CICAE Award for Best European Film at the San Sebastian Film Festival last week.

Producer Ed Guiney welcomed the distribution deal.

“We’re delighted that the story of the Omagh Support Group is being brought to an international audience through these festivals and distribution deals,” he said.

“Obviously this is a story that resonates in today’s world.”

The latest developments were also welcomed by the Irish Film Board which is co-financed the movie.

“This is a stunning achievement for such an engaging and thought provoking film,” Moira Horgan, the board’s head of marketing said.

“We congratulate the film-makers and are thrilled that Omagh is doing fantastically well on an international level.”

Twenty nine men, women and children died in the atrocity on August 15 1998 in an attack which sent shockwaves around the world.

Only one person to date, Colm Murphy from the border town of Dundalk in the Irish Republic has been jailed for having a role in the bomb.

In January 2002 the Special Criminal Court in Dublin sentenced the builder and publican to 14 years in jail.

Some victims’ families are suing him and four others – Seamus Daly, Seamus McKenna, Michael McKevitt, and Liam Campbell – in a landmark civil action.

Pete Travis’s movie, which depicts the struggle of the Omagh Support and Self-Help Group to get justice, was widely acclaimed when it was screened on Channel 4 and RTE television.

Other cast members included Oscar-winning actress Brenda Fricker as Northern Ireland’s Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan and Ballykissangel and Cracker star, Lorcan Cranitch as former RUC Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan.

The movie industry newspaper, Variety this week described Omagh as a “startlingly powerful achievement”.

The film is attracting significant interest from other territories which have not yet signed a film distribution deal.