Northern Irish IRA thriller at Austin Film Festival

This year's Austin Film Festival in Texas will include a Northern Irish tale: a screening of Shadow Dancer, the story of an IRA activist who is forced to turn informer in Belfast in the 1990s.

The film may be directed by acclaimed documentary maker James Marsh – famous for his work on Project Nim and Man on Wire – but the story is fiction, starring Andrea Riseborough as the protagonist and Clive Owen as Mac, the MI5 (British intelligence agency) agent.

When Collette is found at the centre of a foiled IRA bomb plot, she is given a choice: go to prison, leaving her young son alone, or turn informer against her family members involved in the IRA.

Reviewing the film for The Irish Times, Donald Clarke notes that Riseborough, an English actress, pulls off the distinctive Northern accent well, where 'many have fallen before.'

Watch the trailer below – and check it out if you're in Austin!

Produced by the BBC, the film released on 24 August in the UK, and has received positive reviews.

The screening of Shadow Dancer during the Austin Film Festival is on Friday, 19 October at 9.45pm.