Congratulations to four more Irish films, which have been added to the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) line-up. David Freyne’s The Cured will receive its world premiere at TIFF, screening in Special Presentation at the festival, while Rebecca Daly’s Good Favour will be presented in TIFF’s Contemporary Wold Cinema strand, with both films receiving their world premieres at the festival. Brian O’Malley’s The Lodgers will also debut at the world-renowned festival; premiering in the Contemporary World Cinema strand and fresh from its triumph at the Cannes Film Festival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer will screen in Special Presentations. These four Irish titles join previously announced Irish films at TIFF 2017, including The Breadwinner, Mary Shelley and Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami.

Featuring a stellar Irish and international cast including Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Sam Keeley and Ellen Page, David Freyne’s The Cured is produced by Rory Dungan and Rachael O’Kane at Tilted Pictures, with Freyne writing and directing the film. For six years, a virus has devastated Europe, transforming people into zombie-like monsters. All is lost until a cure is found. The cure, which has a 75% success rate, restores the infected to full physical health, although the cured remember everything they did while infected. Three years into this great hope, the third wave of cured are ready for release in Ireland.

Produced by John Keville and Conor Barry of Savage Productions alongside Benoit Roland of Wrong Men, Rebecca Daly’s Good Favour, co-written by Daly and Glen Montgomery, follows a young man named Tom who walks out of an immense forest into the lives of a strictly devout Christian community carving out a remote existence in central Europe. As Tom is initiated into their farming life and scriptural regime, he discovers the community is suffering a crisis of faith following a devastating loss.

Brian O’Malley’s The Lodgers is set in 1920’s rural Ireland during its war of independence and tells the story of Anglo-Irish twins Rachel and Edward who are just about to turn eighteen. They reside in a crumbling manor on the edge of a village, where they have lived alone since their parents’ untimely death. Except they are not entirely alone-for they share the house with an unseen spiritual force which resides in the basement, known only as The Lodgers. The twins must live by very strict rules set out by The Lodgers, or face unknown and devastating punishments. The film is produced by Ruth Treacy and Julianne Forde of Tailored Films from a script written by David Turpin.

Following a successful screening at the Cannes Film Festival, where it scooped the award for Best Screenplay, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer sees Colin Farrell starring as Steven; a charismatic surgeon forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart when the behaviour of a teenage boy (played by up-and-coming Irish actor, Barry Keoghan) he has taken under his wing takes a sinister turn. Nicole Kidman stars as the wife of Farrell’s character, in the film which is produced by Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element Pictures. Lanthimos co-wrote the film alongside Efthimis Fillippou, with whom he previously collaborated on 2015 title, The Lobster.

The 2017 Toronto International Film Festival takes place from 7–17 September and more information can be found here.