Tonight The Shore directed by Terry George won an OSCAR for the Best Live Action Short film Oscar.
earlier this month, we asked Terry George about the chances of The Shore to win an Oscar: “Well I guess we have a 1 in 5 chance, you don’t really know. In terms of my future work, I have been nominated twice before, and it helps to get your name out there, it all helps. The thing with “The Shore” for me is that I am able to show a beautiful part of Ireland to the rest of the world and that means a lot to me. This film is more about the countryside and the people of Ireland and the message that we put out to the rest of the world. The Northern Ireland conflict might be resolved. If both parties make the effort to really talk about it, and I think that it is a message to the rest of the world, it is possible to reach peace between two warring factions. The film has a subliminal message about talking and communicating and eventually the misunderstandings are water under the bridge.”
The Shore is the uplifting story of two boyhood best friends—Joe (Ciarán Hinds) and Paddy (Conleth Hill)—divided for 25 years by the tumult of “The Troubles”. When Joe returns home to Northern Ireland, his daughter Patricia brings the two men together for a reunion, with unexpected results. What happened all those years ago? Can old wounds be healed? The answer is both hilarious and moving. The Shore is about one of the small personal reconciliations that coincide with a national reconciliation.
The Shore is written and directed by Belfast native and double Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director Terry George and produced by his daughter Oorlagh George. It was shot on location in the bay in front of his home in Killough,, Northern Ireland by a cast and crew made up of friends and family. The Shore is Terry George’s first chance to shoot in Northern Ireland.
Terry George’s first dramatic work, the prison escape play, “The Tunnel”, was staged at the Irish Arts Center in New York in 1986.
“The Tunnel” was the first of numerous collaborations with writer/director Jim Sheridan. In 1992, George and Sheridan wrote “In the Name of the Father”. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Screenplay. In 1996, George was named Young European Film Director of the Year for his directorial debut “Some Mother’s Son”.
Since then, he has written and directed numerous television shows and feature films including, “A Bright Shining Lie”, “The District”, “Hart’s War”, and “Reservation Road”. In 2004, he wrote, directed and produced “Hotel Rwanda”. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Screenplay. He most recently directed Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte in the HBO drama series “Luck”.
