East Cork Cinema Club Screen ‘The Black Balloon’

East Cork Cinema Club are showing the Australian film ‘The Black Balloon’ on
Monday 17th May 2010. (Monday Week!) at the Cobh Community Centre. This film was awarded the Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film
Festival. This is our last film of the current season and we are looking to get our
biggest turn-out to date so please invite a friend, family member, or
complete stranger…

See you all there on the night

(See Review Below)

Fresh from its win of the Crystal Bear in the Generation 14 Plus Section at
the recent Berlin Film Festival comes THE BLACK BALLOON by first-time
co-writer/director Elissa Down.

It´s about the Mollison family, Army Dad, Simon, (ERIK THOMSON), very
pregnant Mum, Maggie, (TONI COLLETTE), and sons Thomas, (RHYS WAKEFIELD) and
Charlie, (LUKE FORD). Charlie is autistic.

The family has recently moved to the outer suburbs of Sydney, so Thomas has
to fit into a new school yet again and cope with Charlie when Maggie has to
rest up. Thomas´s burgeoning relationship with Jackie, (GEMMA WARD), is going fine
but Thomas is becoming increasingly resentful of the burdens placed on him
by his brother.

This is such a strong film. The role of Thomas is a knife-edge one, it could
so easily be made unsympathetic, but RHYS WAKEFIELD makes us empathise with
Thomas´s agonies, and LUKE FORD makes Charlie both loveable and
exasperating, another big achievement. But towering over the film is the performance of TONI COLLETTE, she is just
so good in every role she takes on, and ERIK THOMSON gives solid support as
Simon. Model turned actress GEMMA WARD steps up to the plate.

The director Elissa Down grew up with two autistic brothers so there´s a
real truth to what we see in The Black Balloon.

It´s a very auspicious debut for this young Australian filmmaker.