Kiwi Director to film Marian Keyes’ Story   13 Nov 2015

Kiwi Director to film Marian Keyes’ ‘A Woman’s Right To Shoes’

Auckland, New Zealand – 13 November 2015, Robyn Grace, a New Zealand director will film a story by best-selling acclaimed Irish author Marian Keyes in January 2016.

Grace is one of only three people internationally to have gained the rights to Keyes’ work clinched by a personal letter to Keyes herself. “I travelled to Dublin and popped it into her letter box with my own shaky hand. It was both thrilling and terrifying,” says Grace.

The film will follow central character Alice who has one foot bigger than the other. After placing an ad, Alice finds an opposite foot partner, Hayley, and they start a rather uneasy shoe shopping friendship. However one day Alice comes home to find that her husband is in fact leaving her for Hayley. To add insult to injury, Hayley has taken back all the other shoes she bought, leaving Alice with only one shoe of each pair.

Director Robyn Grace says the film will take viewers into Alice’s descent into madness.

“We find Alice walking and counting her steps wearing one shoe, hoping to find the new couple and embarrassing them but only embarrassing herself. We laugh with her and sometimes we cry as watch her recover as a different shoe comes out each night, and is left as an offering outside the pub door,” says Grace.

Grace says she wrote the screenplay and has secured leading Kiwi actresses Brooke Williams (Slow West, Spartacus) and Antonia Prebble (Outrageous Fortune, White Lies) who will play the two lead characters.

‘I’ve also brought together a strong, internationally experienced crew including award winning Director of Photography Dave Garbett (Winner New Zealand film Awards, 'Best Cinematography' (Feature Film), 2014 ‘Everything we Loved’)

Grace has embraced crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to raise funds to support the cost of producing film – pledges can be made by going to the link - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/111447331/a-womans-right-to-shoes-short-film-marian-keyes

The Kickstarter campaign closes on Sunday 22 November 2015 and is targeting NZ$20,000, and has to hit this before pledges are processed.

“Every pledge is amazing. If you like Marian, shoes, want to progress women in film or just feeling generous, then please pledge. It’s secure, and only takes a couple of minutes, a credit card and a few clicks. Thank you!,“ says Grace.

With 20 years film industry experience as a First Assistant Director, Director and Producer, Grace chose ‘A Woman’s Right to Shoes’ as a short film because she loves the way Marian Keyes portrays women in their most vulnerable times, with fantastic humour.

“’A Woman’s Right To Shoes’ shows how women cope with the most terrible things in life that happen to them. Bad things happen to everybody, and it is always relative, but how you cope with it is always individual, and the thing I have learnt is that women seem to have a mechanism that allows them to overcome and just carry on,” says Grace.

ENDS

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