Fox Searchlight won the major bidding for $9 million to nab the distribution rights to Brooklyn, the love drama that stars Saoirse Ronan and Star Wars: The Force Awakens actor Domhnall Gleeson.
Director John Crowley‘s Irish immigrant love story Brooklyn, acquired by Fox Searchlight at Sundance, has won the top audience award at the Vancouver Film Festival.
Adapted from Colm Toibin‘s 2009 novel by Nick Hornby, Brooklyn stars Saoirse Ronan and Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Domhnall Gleeson. Brooklyn is set in 1950s Ireland and centers on a young woman (Ronan) trapped between two men and two countries, and testing her commitment to true love and her duty to her home country.
Emory Cohen, Julie Walters and Jim Broadbent also star. Vancouver audiences also named the Brie Larson-starrer Room the best Canadian feature.
The kidnapping drama, a Canada-Irish co-production directed Lenny Abrahamson, earlier picked up the people’s choice award at the Toronto Film Festival. Room has Larson playing Joy, a young woman kidnapped and held in a tiny, windowless room for seven years with her son Jack, played by 8-year-old Jacob Tremblay.
Room, which debuted in Telluride before shifting to Toronto, opens Oct. 16 in a limited bow before expanding nationwide on Nov. 6, courtesy of A24.