Belfast to welcome Oscar-winner Tim Robbins

This December Oscar-winning actor Tim Robbins (Mystic River, The Shawshank Redemption) will visit Northern Ireland to complete shooting on his latest feature, ‘The Secret Life Of Words’.
The shoot will take place on an oilrig in Belfast’s Harland & Wolff Shipyard, as well as a number of coastal and rural locations throughout Northern Ireland.
Director Isaber Coixet began shooting in Madrid, which is produced by Spanish production company El Deseo with the participation of Mediapro. The budget of the film is €4 million and shooting is to finish at the end of December.
Set on an oil rig in the North Sea, where a handful of men of different nationalities work and live in unsettled harmony, the story is set around Hanna (Sarah Polley), a reserved and mysterious 30 year old. She leads a monotonous, solitary existence, working in a textile factory and forced by her manager to take a vacation in the small coastal town that looks out at the rig. Chance leads her to spend a few days there, looking after Josef (Tim Robbins) who has suffered a series of burns, which have left him temporarily blind.
The NIFTC’s production department liased between El Deseo and Harland & Wolff Shipyard to secure the film location.
NIFTC Chief Executive Richard Williams said: “It’s very exciting that we're getting such an eclectic mix of films coming to shoot in Northern Ireland. El Deseo is a very well regarded Spanish production company and obviously Tim Robbins is a household name. This film is further evidence that Northern Ireland is an attractive place for international filmmakers to shoot their films. We wish the cast and crew good luck and know that they will be very well treated in Northern Ireland. This has already been illustrated by the help provided by Harland & Wolff, who despite being extremely busy have bent over backwards to assist the production by making one of the three oil rigs presently at the docks available for the film”
(GB)