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`Brooklyn' highest film opening since `Michael Collins'

Saoirse Ronan promotes her new film "Brooklyn" in New York. Picture by Amy Sussman/Invision/AP
Saoirse Ronan promotes her new film "Brooklyn" in New York. Picture by Amy Sussman/Invision/AP Saoirse Ronan promotes her new film "Brooklyn" in New York. Picture by Amy Sussman/Invision/AP

NEW release `Brooklyn' has had the biggest opening of any Irish film in Ireland since `Michael Collins' back in 1996.

The film grossed £432,000 on home soil after its November 4 release.

And taking an estimated £1,041,278 in the UK and Ireland combined means the film was the number one opener at the weekend.

It has overtaken recent Irish favourites `The Guard', which collected £408,711, `Angela's Ashes' which took £397,978, `In Bruges' which reached £344,481 and `Calvary' with £330,835.

And the decision to open `Brooklyn' on 87 screens makes it the biggest ever `screen count' in Ireland for an Irish film.

Following its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015, and having a gala presentation at the BFI London Film Festival, the film has already been nominated for five British Independent Film Awards including best actress for Saoirse Ronan, best supporting actress for Julie Walters and best supporting actor Domhnall Gleeson.

Ronan stars in the film, set in the early 1950s, as Eilis, a young woman, who moves from small town Ireland to Brooklyn, New York where she has the opportunity for work and for a better future.

She finds love with Italian-American Tony, but a family tragedy brings her home to Ireland, where she finds herself absorbed into her old community and courted by the eligible Jim (Domhnall Gleeson).

She repeatedly postpones her return to America, torn between two men and two countries.

It is adapted from Colm Tóibín’s New York Times bestseller of the same name.