The Lobster

Shot at Parknasilla Resort & Spa in Sneem, Co. Kerry in Spring 2014, THE LOBSTER is written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou and produced by Ed Guiney, Lee Magiday, Ceci Dempsey and Yorgos Lanthimos. Executive Producers are Andrew Lowe, Tessa Ross and Sam Lavender with Isabel Davis as the lead executive for the BFI Film Fund. The film was developed by Element and Irish finance for the film came from the Irish Film Board with Rory Gilmartin as the lead executive for the IFB.

Featuring an all-star cast including Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Léa Seydoux, John C Reilly, Ben Whishaw, Olivia Colman and Michael Smiley, THE LOBSTER is a blackly funny love story set in a near future where finding love is a matter of life or death.

The movie had its World Premiere at this year’s 68th Cannes Film Festival on Friday 15^th May. And it premiered to rapturous applause and an extended standing ovation. There has been huge praise for the film with industry bible Variety says that “Yorgos Lanthimos’s first English-language feature is a wickedly funny, unexpectedly moving satire of couple-fixated society.” While The Hollywood Reporter sums it up as “A dark, deeply funny dystopian tale.” ​

The Evening Standard commenting that its “very funny but also bloody and brutal, like life. It’s fantasy cinema of the kind that a festival like Cannes lives to nurture: terrific.”

Indiewire comments that “The Lobster brings Lanthimos’ distinct blend of morbid, deadpan humor and surrealism to a broader canvas without compromising his ability to deliver another thematically rich provocation.”  The Guardian call it“bizarre and hilarious” with the highly influential magazine Vanity Fair believing it to be “very much its own unique animal, a strange swirl of satire, allegory, and metaphor that makes a rueful tragic comedy of modern romance.”

British broadsheet, The Telegraph says that Colin Farrell is “every bit as funny and hang-doggedly adorable as he was in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges” and that the film is ‘like nothing you’ve seen before.’ The Irish Times awards THE LOBSTER 4 stars and states “You walk out feeling ever so slightly changed by it. There are few higher compliments.”

Speaking from Cannes, Element Pictures Producer Ed Guiney commented that “the response to Yorgos film was overwhelming. It’s so gratifying that Cannes audiences embraced this wonderfully funny, brilliantly dark and ultimately beautiful film in such an enthusiastic way. It’s exactly what we hoped in launching this film to the world.” THE LOBSTER marks Element Pictures sixth film in official selection at Cannes in recent years.

Irish Audiences will have the chance to see THE LOBSTER when it goes on release in the Autumn through Element Pictures Distribution.

Who would have thought that a film made in Parknasilla Resort & Spa in Sneem, Co Kerry would be a contender for the prestigious Palme D’Or in Cannes!