In what can only be described as a business disaster, the very first screening of Irish movie ‘Songs for Amy’ which stars Sean Maguire, James Cosmo and Patrick Bergin, was cancelled at the last minute at the prestigious Cannes film festival last night.
Writer and producer of the film, Fiona Graham said that the festival organisers apologized for the error, but said they had lost a crucial opportunity to screen Songs for Amy to potential buyers.
Graham said that a lot of time had been spent marketing the film in advance of its planned screening yesterday at The Market Cinema.
‘Songs for Amy’, directed by Konrad Begg, is a darkly told comedy and love story, inspired by the music scene of the west of Ireland. The film is set against the stunning background of County Galway, Ireland. It is aimed at male and female audiences of a broad age range.
The story follows Sean O ‘Malley (Sean Maguire) , a struggling Galway musician who writes an album for the love of his life, Amy (Lorna Anderson) in the hope of redeeming hismself. The album takes him on roller-coaster journey of friendship, love, loss, music, hope and unexpected turns where he is both helped and hindered by his misfit band mates.
Despite the fact that a test showing of the film had been successfully carried out in the cinema the day before, Ms Graham says they were told the screening had to be cancelled due to technical difficulties.
She said: “We had a huge crowd outside the cinema and we had to turn everybody away.”
“There were no other cinemas they could use. 500 films screen here and they had no space for us to be able to re-schedule the film at short notice. And to re-schedule it the following day wasn’t an option as most of the sales agents and distributors would be leaving today.”
“It’s a great blow because we had key cast that had flown in from all over the world, we had Kevin Ryan who flew in from Toronto.”
“We’d been promoting the film for months for the showing here at Cannes and we were out here for a week, we had the musicians playing the sound track all over town, generally creating a great buzz for the film.”
“Our whole purpose of being here was obviously for the screening at Cannes and that would have been our European Premiere and unfortunately that didn’t happen.”
The film will next be screened at its Irish and European Premiere in Galway on the 11th July.
