The Stub

Irish feature WC gets digital release March 15, 2009

Julia Wakeham as Katya and Liam O Mochain as Jack in WC

WC, a feature film by writer/director Liam O Mochain, is the first Irish feature to be released exclusively via digital film from March 13th 2009.

‘WC‘ is the story of Jack (O Mochain) and Katya (Julia Wakeman), two young people working as toilet attendants in a bar where they have to deal with “argumentative customers,  an interfering bar manager, hapless losers and grimy toilets”. Jack is working there for his father from whom he stole money while Katya is trapped in her job due to her illegal status, and although Katya is at first reluctant to trust Jack, a friendship slowly develops between the two..

The film had it’s premiere at the Dublin Film Festival, and its international premiere at the Montreal Film Festival. It has also been screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the Galway Film Fleadh, the Zimbabwe and Cairo International Film Fests and it scooped Best Feature at the Waterford Film Festival. Next up is the Las Vegas Festival in April ’09.

This is O Mocháin’s third feature and is a testament to ‘do it yourself’ filmmaking. He hit a brick wall with his first feature ‘Bigmouth‘ when it was refused funding by the IFB after three years of development, so on his second film, ‘The Book that Wrote Itself‘, O Mochain took the reins and completed the film without film board funding. It garnered quite a bit of interest and even included cameos from the likes of George Clooney and Melanie Griffith. It was natural, then, that O Mochain should find his own ways of gathering the €60,000 budget for ‘WC‘, through sponsorship, private investment and cast and crew deferrals.

‘WC‘ took six months of research and six months writing by O Mochain, who also spent quite a while location hunting with fellow producer, Bernie Grummell. The film boasts an experienced cast and crew, with Mark Waldron (‘Once‘) as DOP, Chris O’ Dwyer (‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley‘) as Sound Recordist and Ignacio Barbe (‘Breakfast on Pluto‘) as Art Director. Julia Wakeham, who plays the lead role of Katya, has previously acted in ‘The Tudors‘ and ‘Bitterness‘ while Adam Goodwin (‘Anton‘, ‘My Boy Jack‘) and Julia Hale (‘Fair City’) also have leading roles.

On its digital release, it will be screened at Movies@Dundrum, SGC Dungarvan and the Eye Cinema Galway.

You can visit the official WC MySpace page here.