Irish Film: Ivan Kavanagh's The Canal secures further distribution

Irish director Ivan Kavanagh’s new horror film The Canal opens today in the US at 20 locations and on Video On Demand. ScreenDaily is reporting that deals have been stuck with a number of international distributors to release the film world-wide.

One of the deals is with Kaleidoscope Pictures to release the film in Ireland and the UK. Kaleidoscope previously released A Belfast Story, Stitches and road-racing picture Road over here.

The film has also picked up deals with Rialto for Australia and New Zealand, Universum for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and Brunchmate for Korea, having previously secured distribution in Singapore via Red Pictures, Malaysia via Yellow Brick, the Middle East via Falcon, and the Benelux countries via A-Film.

The Canal tells the story of David Williams and his wife Alice, who move into a picturesque period house by the canal, along with their small child Billy. The story develops when David begins to suspect that his wife is having an affair, and also starts to have nightmarish visions of an evil presence he believes lives in his home.

The film stars Rupert Evans (Hellboy) and Antonia Campbell-Hughes (Albert Nobbs, Kelly + Victor), as well as Steve Oram, Hannah Hoekstra, Calum Heath, and noted Irish director Conor Horgan.

The Canal opens in Ireland later this year.

Cinema Archivist David Williams lives with his wife, Alice, and their 5-year-old son, Billy. All seems well until David begins to suspect that Alice is cheating on him. His anxiety is then compounded by a bizarre coincidence at work: cataloguing a film-reel from 1902, he learns that his home was the site of a brutal series of murders by a man named William Jackson, who slew his wife for being unfaithful and drowned both of their children in the nearby canal. As David’s suspicions grow, a shadowy figure of a man, who resembles Jackson, starts to appear to him and David becomes convinced that this “evil supernatural presence” that inhabits his house, never ever wants him or his family to leave.