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Irish Independent
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
European premiere of Cillian Murphy's next film Steve set to take place at Cork city festival
Steve, starring Murphy in the lead role as a headteacher at a reform school, will be screened at the Arc Cinema during the Sounds from a Safe Harbour (SFSH) festival. The annual Cork city arts festival, now in its 10th year, will take place from September 11 to September 14. Following the European premiere of Steve, there will be a Q&A with Murphy, writer Max Porter and director Tim Mielants. Murphy will also serve as a co-curator of Sounds from a Safe Harbour, alongside festival director Mary Hickson, composer Bryce Dessner of The National, Porter and folklorist Billy MagFhlionn. 'I am thrilled to be part of the inaugural film programme of SFSH 2025,' Murphy said. 'There has always been such a natural crossover between cinema and music, and these delightfully diverse films very much speak to the philosophy and heart of what this festival is all about. 'It is very meaningful for me to have the European premiere of Steve in my hometown of Cork city. Steve is a film that Max Porter wrote listening to 90's Jungle and the film's score is deeply influenced by the rhythms and patterns of drum and bass." Two Irish premieres are also set to take place at Sounds from a Safe Harbour this year, for Train Dreams starring Joel Edgerton and It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley, a documentary on the life of the late American musician. 'The music documentaries in the programme are studies on some of my favourite artists of all time, Jeff Buckley, Broken Social Scene, Donal Lunny, Brian Eno and Conor Walsh. Each one elegiac and sensitive and revelatory in different ways,' Murphy said. 'Train Dreams is scored by festival curator Bryce Dessner and is a heartbreaking adaptation of that beautiful novel. We are also thrilled to be presenting Manchán Magan's beautifully intimate documentary Let the Land Speak. 'I think Cork audiences will truly relish this bespoke selection of unique films, which can be sampled alongside the amazing live music events happening across the city throughout the festival.' Following the premiere of Steve, the film will be released in select Irish cinemas in September ahead of its release on Netflix on October 3. Tickets for all films at Sounds from a Safe Harbour will go on sale from 12pm on Tuesday, August 5 via the festival's website.
Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
'It's massive for me': Cillian Murphy thrilled new film will premiere in Cork at Safe Harbour fest
Cork actor Cillian Murphy has expressed his delight that his latest film will receive its European premiere in his home city. Steve, an adaptation of the novel Shy by Max Porter, will screen at the Arc Cinema as part of an expanded film strand at the Sounds From A Safe Harbour festival in September. The 49-year-old Oscar winner is one of the curators of the biennial festival which this year is marking 10 years since it was first launched. Murphy, who plays Steve's titular reform school headteacher, and English writer Porter, will be among those in attendance for the screening and post-film Q&A. The Cork event will take place just a week after Steve has its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and comes in advance of a select cinema release before it becomes available on Netflix in October. 'I'm really proud to be able to premiere the film in my hometown. It's massive for me. And a big shout out to Netflix for helping us to sort it,' Murphy told the Irish Examiner. Steve will only be the actor's second time being able to walk down the red carpet for a premiere in Cork, 19 years on from The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006). Murphy has been hands on with Safe Harbour since its inauguration in 2015, following an invitation to get involved by his friend, festival director Mary Hickson. 'Mary is one of my favourite people in the world - an extraordinary, dynamic producer and just a very special human being,' said Murphy of the Fermoy woman. As well as Murphy and Hickson, the curation team for this year's event also features Bryce Dessner of The National, author Max Porter, and folklorist Billy MagFhlionn. Max Porter, Cillian Murphy, and Mary Hickson at a previous Sounds From A Safe Harbour festival. Picture: Bríd O'Donovan Primarily a music festival that has hosted such acts as The National and Bon Iver, one of the unique aspects of Safe Harbour is the focus on a spirit of collaboration between the participating artists. 'Those collaborations, that's what it makes it special,' said Murphy. 'Many of the artists arrive on the Monday, and the festival doesn't open until Thursday. And much of the stuff that the audiences hear wouldn't have existed up until that point.' Indeed, the fruits of one of those collaborations have recently been heard with the release of an album by Ólafur Arnalds from Iceland and the late Cork musician Eoin French, aka Talos. Murphy had also worked with French on a short film project at the 2023 Safe Harbour festival, and was saddened by his death last year at the age of 37 after a short illness. This year's festival will open with a tribute concert to French. 'He was such a talented individual and such a gorgeous fella. It was so so sad. I think that'll be a very special concert,' said Murphy. Among the other music events on the 2025 roster that Murphy says he's looking forward to are the concert at Shandon by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Thomas Bartlett, and a concert entitled 'Sirens', featuring female artists Beth Orton, Lisa Hannigan, La Force, Amanda Bergman, Gemma Hayes, and Niamh Regan. Rhiannon Giddens and Beth Orton feature among the music headliners at Sounds From A Safe Harbour 2025 in Cork. Murphy said has also been impressed with what he's seen on YouTube of Bobby Fingers, the latest incarnation of the Limerick man formerly known as Mr Chrome in the Rubberbandits. 'It's so hard to make an impression nowadays and do something truly original. His prosthetics are absolutely genius. And the films are hilariously funny, and very dark. And then he does a music tune at the end! I think they're one of the most original things I've seen in years.' Murphy, a keen musician before he was an actor, is enthused to be involved in Safe Harbour, an event that gets its name from the Latin motto on Cork's coat of arms. 'I just feel the city is so profoundly musical, and Cork people have such an understanding and love for music,' he said. 'All my youth in the city was about playing music and going to pubs and going to clubs, so this feels like a natural extension of that.' Sounds From A Safe Harbour takes place at various venues in Cork on September 11-14. For details and tickets, see Films at Sounds From A Safe Harbour Steve The European premiere of the adaptation of Max Porter's book. As well as his own connection to the film, Cillian Murphy feels it is an ideal fit for the Safe Harbour festival. 'Max wrote the film listening to drum and bass. And the movie very much kind of has that rhythm of drum and bass. So it's very informed by 1990s music,' says the actor who plays the lead character in a film that will get a cinema release before appearing on Netflix. The Cork man also roped in Geoff Barrow, of one of his favourite bands, Portishead, who worked with composer Ben Salisbury on the soundtrack. It's Never Over: Jeff Buckley Jeff Buckley in 1994. (Photo by) A documentary on the American musician who drowned in 1997 at the age of 30. 'I'm a huge fan of Jeff Buckley – I remember having the Grace album on cassette,' says Murphy. 'This is a beautiful tribute to his brief life, and he was such a remarkable person. It's very delicate. It's very intimate. It's heartbreaking.' Brad Pitt is also a fan of Buckley, and served as executive producer on the documentary, as well as being directly involved in helping the Safe Harbour organisers to secure the film for the Cork screening. Train Dreams A drama about an American railroad labourer, the cast includes Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, and Irish actress Kerry Condon. The Irish premiere will include a post-show Q&A with Bryce Dessner, the Safe Harbour festival co-curator and member of The National who wrote the score for the film. In Time: Dónal Lunny Dónal Lunny. Picture: Denis Minihane. A documentary on the Irish music legend will be followed by live music from his former collaborator Andy Irvine. 'I urge everybody to go and see it; it's a stunning piece of work by director Nuala O'Connor. When you see Lunny's influence on traditional music, it's just phenomenal,' says Murphy. It's All Gonna Break: Broken Social Scene A documentary on the Canadian music group that will be followed by a Q&A with founding member Charlie Spearin. Though the band haven't played in Cork, members and ex-members have performed at previous Safe Harbour festivals, including Feist and La Force. 'They're one of my favorite bands, and it's a beautiful documentary because it's made from a fan's perspective. And I know there's a lot of Broken Social Scene fans in Cork,' says Murphy. Conor Walsh: Selected Piano Works The minimalist work of the Mayo-born pianist was just beginning to become more widely known when he died of heart attack in 2016, aged 36. 'Again, it's so sad that he's not with us any more, but the music he's left is phenomenal. It's a very meditative, very thoughtful documentary. I highly recommend it,' says Murphy. Eno Brian Eno. (Photo by) Released to much acclaim last year, the documentary on Brian Eno delves into his work with the likes of Roxy Music, Bowie and U2. It is also fittingly innovative in that the film uses 'generative' computer technology to offer a slightly-different version every time it is shown. 'This an individual who's kind of had more influence, I'd say, in contemporary music, than anyone you're likely to mention. It's fascinating, because you get to see how he works in it. He kind of walks you through it,' says Murphy. Listen to the Land Speak Manchán Magan's film urges the need for a reconnection between the land and Irish culture, as well as weaving in the story of his personal battle with cancer. 'It's a very revealing, very honest film, beautifully photographed. I do think we all need a bit of that in our lives, a bit of reconnection with the land,' says Murphy.
The Guardian
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
From ‘unpublishable' to acclaim and starry adaptations: Max Porter's Grief is the Thing With Feathers at 10
The final words of Max Porter's Grief is the Thing With Feathers are 'Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything'. So it has been for the slender novella, about a father and his sons grieving the loss of their wife and mother. Somewhat improbably for an experimental hybrid of poem and prose featuring a giant talking crow, Porter's debut has not only been a massive success, but has continued to evolve. Since it was published a decade ago, it's been translated into 36 languages and adapted for stage and screen, including a theatre show starring Oscar winner Cillian Murphy and a film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, due for release later this year. The book's latest evolution is an Australian stage adaptation, premiering at Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre this month. There have already been five stage productions, and a dance adaptation and Slovenian puppet version are on the way; an opera is in development. All this seems remarkable to Porter. 'You know, Grief was not even a publishable proposition to most people that looked at it first,' he says. Porter was more aware than most debut writers of the odds stacked against his novel: he was working in publishing when he wrote it, and keenly aware how his book's fragmentary narrative and experimental prose – which the Guardian described at the time as 'a freewheeling hybrid of novella, poem, essay and play-for-voices' – was risky. Then there's its dense threading of literary references and allusions – and the anthropomorphic crow, inspired by Ted Hughes' 1970 poem cycle Crow. Porter wrote Grief in the gaps of a busy life working in publishing and fathering two young boys, inspired by his experience of losing his father as a child and by his relationship with his brother. In the story, a writer and his two young sons grappling with fresh grief are visited by a human-sized talking crow, who takes up residence in their flat and assumes the role of therapist and babysitter – or as Porter has described him, 'Lady in Black and Mary Poppins, analyst and vandal'. The story chimed with readers, finding an audience as much through personal recommendations as through rave reviews and awards (including the £30,000 International Dylan Thomas prize). Dua Lipa, introducing the novel to her book club audience in April, described it as a 'lyrical, surreal meditation on loss' that simultaneously broke her heart and made her laugh. Reflecting on the enduring appeal and many adaptations, Porter says: 'I guess the imaginary crow and, you know, the everlasting conundrum of human grief, is enough for people to want to play around with still.' Most authors are happy to leave adaptations to others, approving the parameters of the project and then stepping away. Not Porter: he likes to muck in. 'I'm 98% collaboration,' he says – perhaps surprisingly, given he's published four books in the last decade, and just finished his fifth. 'Like, occasionally I will find myself on my own, needing to get some work done, but generally I want to be working with others.' Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning He sat in on early workshops of the Irish stage version with Cillian Murphy and director Enda Walsh, attended a work-in-progress showing of the dance version premiering in Birmingham next year, and has had several chats with the Belvoir team over the show's long gestation. That's not to say he's proscriptive about adaptations: 'I always say this: the book is yours. It's supposed to be fluid and pull-apart-able,' he says. 'It's a book with lots of white space so that the reader can do that work, anyway. You know, it's your flat, it's your sibling relationship. It's your crow.' Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion But for Porter – a 43-year-old who converses with the enthusiasm of a preteen boy – discussing his work with other artists and storytellers is energising. 'I had a Zoom chat with [Australian director Simon Phillips] the other day, and it was like, right into the belly of the thing – right into the syntax of it, and the meaning behind some of Crow's language and some of the dad's material. And I was like, this is right back to being interesting again for me,' he says. The Belvoir production, co-adapted by Phillips with lighting and set designer Nick Schlieper and actor Toby Schmitz, will feature video, illustrations and a live cellist on stage. Schmitz, playing both Dad and Crow, says the production is infused with the make-believe spirit of theatre and child's play. 'Sleight of hand, misdirection, all the old theatre magic tricks come into play. Can a blanket be not just a blanket? What can a feather be? … There's something incredible about the suspension of disbelief in theatre.' Schmitz, who also works part-time in his family's bookstore in Newtown, heard about Porter's novel from customers long before he read it: 'People are always asking for it,' he says. 'The book is so magnificent, the text is so unique and delicious … I think it lends itself wonderfully – quite effortlessly – to performance.' He relates to the character of Dad, a 'literary boffin type figure', as both an author (his novel The Empress Murders was published in May) and a father – at time of speaking, juggling rehearsals with the whirlwind of school holidays. Crow is something more mysterious, however – 'full of infinite possibility,' he says. 'I've been swinging from Mary Poppins to Tom Hardy thuggery.' Porter, who will visit Sydney for the play's opening, says he's excited to see what the Australian team have made of his novel. 'I think I find something different every time,' he says of the story's various iterations. 'It's still interesting – it's not like a piece of dead, old, early work. For me, it feels like a living, breathing proposition still, that keeps moving.' Grief is the Thing with Feathers is on at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, 26 July to 24 August
Sydney Morning Herald
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The ‘unpublishable' book that conquered the world
When English author Max Porter wrote his 2015 debut novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, he never imagined it would end up on bookshelves, let alone on world stages. At the time, he had a lot on his plate as a father of young children, plus a demanding day job as an editor (he's worked on such highbrow titles as Eleanor Catton's Booker Prize winner The Luminaries and Nobel Prize recipient Han Kang's The Vegetarian). With little time for his own creativity, the self-described 'compulsive maker of things' began fiddling with what he had dubbed his 'crow book' in the evening or on public transport. 'I had this preoccupation for a long time in how to tell the story of these two children who lose a parent, which is based in my own life,' says Porter, whose father died when he was six. 'I was sort of walloping through joyful life and wondering why at age 30 I was still wanting to sit down on a Sunday night and weep for my dad.' The resulting novella became a literary sensation. Its blend of prose, poetry and fable addressed grief not in a didactic manner, but instead with a 'squalid, flapping, unpredictable, scatological madness' as Porter puts it. The work switches between the perspectives of a widowed Ted Hughes scholar, his two boys and the avian visitor Crow, who arrives after the death of their wife and mother and 'won't leave until you don't need me any more'. When Porter first showed it to people, it was deemed almost unpublishable as it was so unlike anything else in the literary landscape. 'I never thought of it as a thing that would sit in bookshops,' Porter says. 'Even when it came out, people were like, where does it go? In poetry? In fiction? In memoir? And I was always quite pleased with that, let it hop around.' Loading The book became not only an international bestseller, but also a critical success, winning the Dylan Thomas Prize and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. It also set off a flurry of adaptations in its wake, including a 2018 play adapted by Enda Walsh starring Cillian Murphy and a big-screen version with Benedict Cumberbatch that premiered at Sundance Film Festival this year. When asked about any other reimaginings, Porter reels off a dizzying array of versions he's aware of, a Birmingham dance adaptation, an Argentinian theatre show, a puppet adaptation in Estonia and a person in Stockholm who wants to do an opera of it.
The Age
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The ‘unpublishable' book that conquered the world
When English author Max Porter wrote his 2015 debut novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, he never imagined it would end up on bookshelves, let alone on world stages. At the time, he had a lot on his plate as a father of young children, plus a demanding day job as an editor (he's worked on such highbrow titles as Eleanor Catton's Booker Prize winner The Luminaries and Nobel Prize recipient Han Kang's The Vegetarian). With little time for his own creativity, the self-described 'compulsive maker of things' began fiddling with what he had dubbed his 'crow book' in the evening or on public transport. 'I had this preoccupation for a long time in how to tell the story of these two children who lose a parent, which is based in my own life,' says Porter, whose father died when he was six. 'I was sort of walloping through joyful life and wondering why at age 30 I was still wanting to sit down on a Sunday night and weep for my dad.' The resulting novella became a literary sensation. Its blend of prose, poetry and fable addressed grief not in a didactic manner, but instead with a 'squalid, flapping, unpredictable, scatological madness' as Porter puts it. The work switches between the perspectives of a widowed Ted Hughes scholar, his two boys and the avian visitor Crow, who arrives after the death of their wife and mother and 'won't leave until you don't need me any more'. When Porter first showed it to people, it was deemed almost unpublishable as it was so unlike anything else in the literary landscape. 'I never thought of it as a thing that would sit in bookshops,' Porter says. 'Even when it came out, people were like, where does it go? In poetry? In fiction? In memoir? And I was always quite pleased with that, let it hop around.' Loading The book became not only an international bestseller, but also a critical success, winning the Dylan Thomas Prize and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. It also set off a flurry of adaptations in its wake, including a 2018 play adapted by Enda Walsh starring Cillian Murphy and a big-screen version with Benedict Cumberbatch that premiered at Sundance Film Festival this year. When asked about any other reimaginings, Porter reels off a dizzying array of versions he's aware of, a Birmingham dance adaptation, an Argentinian theatre show, a puppet adaptation in Estonia and a person in Stockholm who wants to do an opera of it.
