I’ll never forget watching Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, better known as The Swell Season, win an Oscar for Best Original Song at the 2007 Academy Awards. The duo’s heartfelt acceptance speech brought tears to my eyes, and it felt like the culmination of a beautiful story of real-life friends and bandmates falling in love while filming a little indie movie called Once about strangers falling in love.

I was equally emotional over the news of Handard and Irglova’s breakup. But like their respective characters’ decision in the movie to go back to their former loves rather than pursue a relationship together, the split felt almost expected. The story was too good to be true, a fairy tale, and the reality of a grueling tour schedule and the pressures of success was bound to kick in at some point.

It was a movie that prompted the couple to fall in love, and now a movie has been made to document their falling out of it. Simply titled The Swell Season, the documentary directed by Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins, and Carlo Mirabella-Davis chronicles the intense years experienced by Hansard and Irglova following the success of Once. Shot in black and white, the documentary is rife with music, and much like Once, I’m expecting an intensely bittersweet but rewarding viewing experience.

The Swell Season will be showing at the Los Angeles Irish Film Festival later this month before screening at the Downtown Independent in October. Full list of screenings below.

The Swell Season Screenings:

09/23-10/01 – Edmonton Film Festival Canada
09/25 – Cedar Cultural Center @ Minneapolis, MN
09/30 – Los Angeles Irish Film Festival @ Los Angeles, CA
10/07-10/13 – Downtown Independent @ Los Angeles, CA
10/07-10/16 – Warsaw Film Festival Poland
10/08 – Northwest Film Center @ Portland, OR
10/17-10/27 – Alamo Drafthouse @ Austin, TX
10/20-11/03 – Philadelphia Film Festival @ Philadelphia, PA
10/21-10/27 – Cinema Village @ NY, NY
10/21-10/27 – ReRun Theater @ Brooklyn, NY
10/21-10/27 – Zeitgeist @ New Orleans, LA
10/21-10/27 – Times Cinema @ Milwaukee, WI
10/21-10/27 – Pickford Film Center @ Bellingham, WA
10/22-10/23 – Hawaii International Film Festival @ Honolulu, HI
10/28-11/03 – Capitol Theater @ Olympia, WA
11/03-11/24 – Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Taiwan
11/09-11/20 – Stockholm Film Festival Sweden
11/11-11/17 – SIFF Cinema @ Seattle, WA
11/18-11/24 – Minnesota Film Arts @ Minneapolis, MN
11/19-11/20 – Aperture cinema @ Winston-Salem, NC

For more info on The Swell Season:

Official Site