How Ireland’s distribution market is forging its own identity

For a country with a population of just five million people, Ireland punches above its weight when it comes to its film exports. Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan are among the industry’s most bankable stars, and Irish titles have lit up this year’s A-list festivals.

Local fare is also proving popular on home turf. “Films that are very Irish and authentic in their storytelling, and have a singular voice, are working,” explains Nell Roddy, who co-founded Wicklow-based distributor Break Out Pictures in 2019 with fellow former Element Pictures executive Robert McCann Finn.

Break Out Pictures’ The Quiet Girl, released in partnership with Curzon in the UK in 2022, was the first Irish-language drama to gross more than $1.1m (€1m) at the UK-Ireland box office. Pat Collins’ English-language That They May Face The Rising Sun also performed confidently for Break Out, landing around $877,000 (€800,000) in the UK and Ireland, teaming up with Glasgow-based Conic in April.

This year Kneecap, the Sundance award-winning rap biopic, broke the record for the widest release of an Irish film on the island of Ireland for Wildcard Distribution (109 sites), with a respectable $320,000 (€292,000) August opening weekend. Three weekends in on its full release across UK-Ireland, it has taken $2.2m (€2m) from the UK-Ireland (as of September 9). 

Local lens 

The UK and Ireland are treated as a single territory with regards to box-office reporting and distribution deals, with UK companies historically taking rights across both countries. “A sales agent will want to sell for UK-Ireland,” says Patrick O’Neill, managing director and founder of Wildcard. “The scale of the companies in the UK are larger than the scale of the companies here. If you’re selling to a Lionsgate or a Studiocanal, they have deeper pockets.”

That does not render Ireland an afterthought. “You need to look after the Irish market in every way as much as you would the UK market,” says Karen O’Malley, head of distribution at Dublin-based Volta Pictures. “You are leaving opportunities and money on the table if you don’t work it every bit as hard as you would your own domestic territory.”

All the major US studios — Disney, Paramount Pictures, Fox, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros — have offices in Dublin, and many UK indie distributors will seek the help of an Irish distributor to connect with a local audience. There has been steady growth in boots-on-the-ground distributors in Ireland over the past two decades, who noted a gap in the market for giving Irish films the homegrown attention they deserve.

Eclipse Pictures, Volta Pictures, Wildcard Distribution and Break Out Pictures are the four core companies in operation. Their business models include a combination of buying Irish distribution (and sometimes Ireland-UK) rights for Irish features, as well as partnering with UK distributors on international releases across Ireland, with the Irish distributor leading on the Northern Ireland release in most cases.

Typically, the rule of thumb has been that Ireland drums up around 10% of UK-Ireland box-office takings and far higher for local content. The Quiet Girl took $1.4m (€1.3m) in the Republic of Ireland, and around $439,000 (€400,000) in the UK.

While geographically and historically the UK and Ireland are linked, cultural differences can be profound, which is where Irish distributors prove their mettle to UK partners. “It’s a unique market — it has its own cultural sensitivities,” says O’Malley, pointing to Audrey Diwan’s abortion drama Happening, on which Volta worked with the UK’s Picturehouse Entertainment to raise the film’s profile in Ireland during its 2022 release.

“There were different angles to explore in Ireland. Culturally and politically, the whole question and debate around access and abortion was a different conversation here [than in the UK],” explains O’Malley. Abortion was only legalised in Ireland in 2018, and in UK-governed Northern Ireland in 2019.

The terms of the partnership deals between UK and Ireland companies vary. In some instances, the UK distributor will pay a flat fee in return for bookings and marketing support, while retaining all rights — for example, Volta services Mubi and the Royal Opera House’s theatrical releases in Ireland, while Eclipse releases for Black Bear. In others, a UK and Irish distributor may pre-buy a title together, with an appropriate split in workload, costs and upsides between the two territories, as is the case with Kneecap, on which Wildcard — also a co-producer on the project — pre-bought the title alongside Curzon in the UK, and is handling the all-Ireland release.

National funding body Screen Ireland offers distribution support, totalling around $658,000 (€600,000) per year, with up to $110,000 (€100,000) per project, under the stewardship of Emma Scott, Screen Ireland’s head of distribution and short film production. Support is available for distribution companies established in the Republic that are planning to release feature films theatrically across all Ireland, providing the film is already in receipt of Screen Ireland production or completion funding. Funding is not available for non-Irish companies planning direct distribution of a Screen Ireland-backed film in the Irish market.

If UK rights have been acquired by the Irish distributor, limited UK theatrical release costs are now included in the eligible spend criteria for the distribution fund.

Structural challenges

There are some notable gaps within Ireland’s film infrastructure, owing to the modest size of the market. Ireland does not have any major national sales agents, with London-based Bankside Films the closest thing — driven in part by managing director Stephen Kelliher being of Irish heritage. Bankside’s Irish slate includes upcoming football drama Saipan, The Quiet Girl, Bally­walter, Woken, West The Road and Ready Or Not. Paris-based Charades is also a fan of Irish fare, representing Kneecap, Apocalypse Clown and Toronto premiere Bring Them Down. 

With a lack of national sales agents, Break Out believes Irish distributors bridge a gap for up-and-coming filmmakers, offering guidance when bringing their films to the international stage. “If they’re early-career producers or directors, you have understanding of the market and you certainly give advice,” says Roddy. “It’s not a formal relationship.”

“[Film sales] is an area we’ve looked at — it’s kind of organically happened a few times,” adds McCann Finn. “We haven’t jumped in yet, but we’re looking at it.”

Irish outfits are also yet to make a splash when it comes to acquiring international titles. But Brexit could change all that. Ireland is part of the European Union and Creative Europe, enabling access to Creative Europe distribution support for non-national European films within Ireland, a benefit the UK no longer enjoys.

When an Irish distributor releases a film in Ireland on behalf of a UK company, it negates the ability to access this funding if the UK company remains the rights holder. If an Irish distributor were to own the rights outright to a non-national European title, it could access Creative Europe support. Creative Europe has confirmed to Screen International that it is “fully aware” of the situation Irish distributors have found themselves in post-Brexit, and that from 2025 Creative Europe Media will provide increased targeted support to Irish distributors, with further details to be unveiled in due course.

Looking to Europe

“[European acquisition] is something we’d like to look at within the next few years,” says Roddy. “Ireland doesn’t have a huge amount of arthouse cinemas, so it’s about building the audience here for those kinds of films. We recently had meetings with Creative Europe about how that could work. We’re a European country, and being able to acquire European films for a European audience is important.”

“The growing familiarity with foreign-language content on the streamers is helpful in removing the barrier audiences may have had to this material,” adds Scott. “We also have great cinemagoing communities from Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Asia, so there is the possibility to grow audiences further with the right films.”

The limited number of arthouse venues in Ireland remains a hurdle for independent distributors looking to break out into international acquisitions. The main arthouse venues across the island are Dublin’s Irish Film Institute and Lighthouse Cinema, Pálás in Galway, Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast and Triskel Arts Centre in Cork. “We don’t have that network of Curzon and Picturehouse cinemas you have in the UK,” says O’Neill.

A big advantage for Ireland’s independent distributors compared to their UK counterparts, which could prove advantageous down the road for bringing more European arthouse fare into mainstream exhibition, is that the main cinema multi­plex chains, Omniplex and IMC, are independently owned.

“I can pick up the phone and have a conversation with the owners of those cinemas,” says O’Neill. “Ireland has got more of a human touch to it.”

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