The Swell Season Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Tuesday January 10, 2012 | 7:30pm
Kay Meek Centre
1700 Mathers Avenue, West Vancouver
DOXA Documentary Film Festival’s Motion Pictures Film Series and the Kay Meek Centre are very proud to present the Western Canadian Premiere of The Swell Season. Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová catapulted to international fame in 2008, when the duo picked up two Academy Awards for the film Once. A fictional version of their real-life relationship, the film helped to launch an album, and a worldwide tour for the couple. But the reality behind their fairytale romance proved infinitely more complex as the pressures of fame exacted a toll on their musical and personal relationship.
Filmed in exquisite black & white, The Swell Season is filled with bravura musical performances, and larger-than-life characters (Glen Hansard’s parents seem to tumble out of the pages of a James Joyce novel). But it is the deeply intimate and quieter moments that provide the film’s most powerful impact, as the couple slowly comes to the realization that the price of fame might just mean the end of their relationship. Genuine heartbreak has rarely been so beautifully captured. Directors Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s keenly intelligent and observant film is a stunning achievement.
"…extraordinary documentary, so intimate and so natural, you feel as if you've stumbled into the room by mistake." -- LA Times
"You're unlikely to find a documentary so immediate and so emotionally honest as this."-- The Dispatch
"A bruised-but-sweet flip side to Once's dreamy love song" -- The Hollywood Reporter
"A really beautiful love story..." -- NPR
"...a poignant commentary on the uneasy commingling of love and fame." -- The New York Times
