Locally shot film bound for Cannes

Locally shot film bound for Cannes

8 April 2015

A SHORT film which was shot around Dundrum in November has been shortlisted out of 15,000 others for the Cannes Film Festival.

Good Boy, which features several local actors including Dundrum man, Declan Rodgers, and eight year-old Joshua Webster, from Seaforde, will be presented at the prestigious festival in May. The announcement is a major accolade for director, Conan McIvor, from Belfast, and the small team which shot the film at several locations around Dundrum.

Good Boy revolves around Declan Rodgers who plays a doctor, called Mark,  who was given up for adoption when he was born. Years later his birth mother, Alice, played by Laura Hughes, who is terminally ill, recognises him in a newspaper article and visits his seaside home hoping to meet him before her death.

She brings along her red setter and by chance bumps into her son as she walks on the beach where he is out jogging. In the coming days the two strike up a friendship as Laura’s character agonises over whether to reveal her secret.

The film comes to a head with Mark and Alice sharing a cup of tea in her small, rented cottage. As she prepares to tell him she is his birth mother, Mark’s phone rings and he is forced to rush away leaving Alice’s plan unfulfilled.

But Alice realises that Mark’s priority is his young son so she decides against telling him and returns home to die. In a lovely poignant moment she gives father and son the red setter and watches them playing with it from the sand dunes of Murlough before finally leaving.

During filming the crew was based in Gilroy’s pub in the centre of the village, and there was even a part for pub owner, Bridhgin Gilroy, in the film.