HOWZAT

“It was incredibly tough trying to get even a short film made,” says Gleeson. “Myself and Nathalie were often penniless, and then we had a new baby coming into the mix, too. For quite some time, all I could think about was the fact that my family were never keen for me to take this path. They knew just how tough a life this could be.”

His first short, Feels Like Home, was completed in 1999 and was followed in 2002 by Hunted, thus preparing Gleeson for his first feature, the story of a shy civil servant who moves into a flat with a gay housemate. Even as Cowboys & Angels started garnering praise from the likes of Variety and The New York Times, the hard times continued.

“Most film-makers will take on commercial after commercial to keep themselves afloat, but I’ve only ever managed to make one. That sort of work just isn’t in me, and that means money has often been incredibly tight. There was a better budget for The Front Line, so we actually got a decent wage out of it, but there have been plenty of times when a sensible person would have thrown in the towel.

“I also realise that if I were to make a shamelessly commercial film — something like Man About Dog [his fellow Irish director Paddy Breathnach’s 2004 film] — life would be an awful lot easier, but I just couldn’t make a film like that. It’s not something I could feel comfortable with, because I want my films to say something. Entertain, sure, but give people something to think about on the drive home, too. That’s more important to me than money.”

Gleeson’s determination to do justice to the back story he had created for his African immigrant saw him heading out to the Democratic Republic of Congo for six weeks.

“I had called around quite a few aid agencies, but pretty much all of them turned me down,” he says. “You have to go through an aid agency; it’s very difficult to go out there on your own. People have tried it and not come back. Insurance was a problem for everyone, too, but from the moment I first spoke with John O’Shea [director of the Third World charity Goal], it was all systems go. ‘We can get you in where the killing is happening,’ he told me. John doesn’t mind what the medium is, as long as someone is talking about the situation. The film humanises the situation in Congo and I think John will be very happy with it.”

Whether the various financiers behind this €2m European co-production will be happy with their investment will be determined over the coming months. If The Front Line does well in Ireland, its chances of a push abroad will be increased dramatically.

“It’s tough for Irish films out there,” says Gleeson, “and it’s a very precarious position to try and survive as a writer/director in Ireland. You’re at the whim of the finance minister with every budget.

“Something like Man About Dog certainly doesn’t seem to travel at all. Every country has its local heroes, but I think The Front Line is a much more universal kind of story. It’s great to be able to make a bank heist thriller with a strong political bite. It’s the kind of film that you can still make in Europe, thankfully.”

While the posters for The Front Line spring up around the country, and the critics start sharpening their pencils, the opinion Gleeson values most is still that of his father, Eddie. The fact that Cowboys & Angels didn’t do all that well in the Gleeson family cinema, however, underlines how difficult it is to sell Irish films to home audiences.

“Every small country struggles to compete with the big Hollywood blockbuster,” says Gleeson. “Having Cowboys & Angels — a film set in Limerick, made by a Limerick native — fail to connect with a lot of people in Limerick drove that point home for me. It made me realise that, to draw real numbers, you need a big name, a big marketing campaign or a big, easy-to-understand Snakes on a Plane kind of idea.

“Of course, I would love to work with a large budget and have a big name in there, too, but that’s not really an option at this point. So I put all my energy into the story and just hope that good word of mouth will do the rest. Besides, I just don’t think Eddie Murphy would look convincing as a security guard standing outside a Dublin bank.”

The Front Line opens on Friday