The award winning short film Swerve has just been released online. Swerve is a crime comedy about a deadly game where it’s every man for himself as a group of ambitious criminals do battle for a mysterious bag. This game has been going on for as long as anyone in the criminal underworld can remember. If you play, you play to win. If you lose, you die. But the question is, what’s in the bag?
The film is directed by Ross Costigan and written by John Morton. It was produced by Alan Slattery for Mycrofilms. It won best Short Film at the 2015 Underground Cinema Film Festival and has just finished a festival run where it has screened all over the world.
The cast of the Swerve includes Ed Murphy, David Thompson, John Doran, Peter McGann, John Morton, Stephen Colfer, Niall Sheehy, Paul Young, James McHale, Brendan Corcoran, Ger Cody, Joe Cleere, Niall Morrissey, Ken McGuire, Niamh Moyles and Adrian Kavanagh.
Director Ross Costigan told Film Ireland that “About five years ago we were shooting an episode of webcom Vultures when John Morton said he had a script I should read. It might be good for me to direct and that it was basically inspired by the video game Streets Of Rage but set in Ireland. Then Mycrofilms and myself received a small collaboration bursary from Artlinks and thought we might just be able to make a film out of it. We managed to assemble a huge cast and crew of amazing talented people, all working for free and from there we spent six days turning the streets of Kilkenny into the most ridiculous, violent relay race imaginable”
Speaking to Film Ireland, writer John Morton explains that “The idea was inspired by the video game Streets Of Rage and the idea was to do a short about a game that moved in a scrolling beat ’em up fashion, with random players entering at different stages. I wanted to write something pulpy and kind of schlocky, which I hadn’t really done before so Swerve scratched that itch for a lot of us. Thematically, it’s about the nature of crime and how criminals once had a semi noble code but are now opportunists and cheaters and in that idea, it gave us the scope to do a ridiculous shoot ’em up and play with guns.’
[vsw id=”AeX5cXEVL_w” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]
The making of Swerve was supported by Artlinks. It was shot entirely on location in Kilkenny City
Previous short movies from Mycrofilms include John Morton’s Daffney Molloy and Other Catastrophes (Chicago Irish Film Festival/Indie Cork) Hot Water Bottle (Cork Film Festival) and Terrence White’s Baby Love which played numerous national and international film festivals.
For more on the film, please visit www.mycrofilms.com/swerve
