What do you do when you lose Paul Mescal as one of your leads? In the case of filmmaker Christopher Andrews and his thrilling revenge thriller “Bring Them Down,” debuting in Toronto on September 8, you simply replace the Oscar-nominated and sought-after young Irish star of the moment with the other Oscar-nominated and sought-after Irish star of the moment, Barry Keoghan.
Barry Keoghan agreed to make 'Bird' before he even read the script
But that wasn’t the only element the debuting director inverted to great effect in his Mubi-backed feature, which also stars Christopher Abbott and explores an escalating conflict between two rival sheep farming families in rural Ireland. Based on his own experiences working on farms in the north of England, the film — produced by Wild Swim Films, Tailored Films and Frakas Productions — was originally conceived to be set and filmed in the UK, but production relocated to Wicklow, Ireland (though it’s set in Connemara) to take advantage of the country’s generous tax breaks.
As Andrews — whose previous experience includes working in the camera department for the first three seasons of “Shameless” — explains, he went to great lengths to give the film a local authenticity, with much of the film actually spoken in Irish (and most of that by Abbott, one of the few Irishmen in the cast).
Speaking to Variety, Andrews discusses how he brought Keoghan on board when his stardom skyrocketed after 'The Banshees of Inisherin,' how Abbott's Irish convinced a local and the trials and tribulations of creating a field full of dead sheep.
