Lesley McKimm

Lesley McKimm has been working in film and television since 1991 and initially worked for many of the main Irish production companies including Temple Films (now Element), Treasure Films and Little Bird. With these companies she worked in a variety of roles including, producer, line producer, production manager, post-production supervisor and script development. She became a producer in 1995 with the award winning short film 81, written and directed by Stephen Burke, which won numerous international awards.

Other work in the late 1990's included Relative Strangers - 4 x 50 television drama series starring Brenda Fricker, for RTÉ and WDR (for Little Bird), In Search of Ancient Ireland – 3 x 1 hour documentary series for PBS and RTÉ (for Little Bird & Café), Home - a series of six half-hour documentaries for RTÉ (for Treasure Films) and Southpaw – feature length documentary which was released theatrically in Ireland and the UK and screened at Sundance (for Treasure Films as Line Producer).

She set up her own production company Comet Films in 1998 where she produced the 6 part drama series Any Time Now in 2002, for BBC 1, RTÉ 1 & The Irish Film Board, and No Tears (4x1 hour) for RTÉ 1, in association with Little Bird, and the 35mm short film No No No (directed by Stephen Bradley). She also produced the Arts Lives documentary To Be Or Not To Be for RTÉ, the Arts Council of Ireland and the Irish Film Board, and the theatre show A Heart of Cork, for Cork 2005.

No Tears starred Brenda Fricker, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Tina Kellegher and was one of the most watched dramas on RTÉ. It won the Golden Nymph for best drama at Monte Carlo in 2002 and was selected as one of three Irish projects at INPUT in 2003. Any Time Now has sold to Australia (ABC), New Zealand (TVNZ), Finland (Channel 4) and Sweden (SVT) and won awards for Susan Lynch, Angeline Ball and Ruth McCabe.

She merged Comet Films with Newgrange Pictures in late 2006 and was working alongside fellow producer Jackie Larkin. Newgrange Pictures was one of 10 Irish production companies to receive MPD (company slate) funding from the Irish Film Board in Dec. 2006. She co-produced the German-Austrian film Kill Daddy, Goodnight, which had its world premier at the Berlin Film Festival. Lesley also executive produced the 2 part TV drama Whistleblower (with Saffron Pictures) for RTE 1, which won the best drama award in 2009.

She produced the feature film Happy Ever Afters, starring Golden Globe winner Sally Hawkins and Tom Riley. It was released theatrically by Disney in Ireland, Verve in the UK, Haut et Court in France, Lucky Red in Italy and Senator in Germany. It is being sold by Films Distribution. She is graduate of EAVE 1998 and the Media Business School 2002 and sits on the board of the Irish Film Board and Pan Pan Theatre Company.

Tribeca Film