Waking Ned Devine

Kirk Jones' Waking Ned Devine (released in Ireland as Waking Ned) opened the 1998 Heartland Film Festival in the United States, where it won the Audience Award, and earned Jones a BAFTA nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 1999 ceremony. It grossed over $46 million worldwide on a budget of about $3 million, a remarkable return for a small Irish-set comedy and one of the best results for any British-financed comedy of its decade.

It was the directorial debut of Kirk Jones, a British advertising director who had spent the 1990s making television commercials. He went on to direct Nanny McPhee (2005), Everybody's Fine (2009) and What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012), but none of them matched the commercial or critical standing of Waking Ned, which is still the film he is remembered for.

Ian Bannen and David Kelly, both veterans of Irish stage and screen for over forty years by then, play the two friends at its centre. Bannen had been one of the most consistent Scottish-English screen actors since the 1960s, and this was his last major lead; he died in 1999, less than a year after the film's release. Kelly kept working into his eighties, including a memorable turn as Grandpa Joe in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). For cost reasons the film was shot largely on the Isle of Man, though the screenplay is set in the fictional County Wicklow village of Tullymore. Henry Braham was the cinematographer.