A still from "The Golden West."Floodlight
A trailer for Oscar winners Ross White and Tom Berkeley's latest short film "The Golden West" has been released ahead of its premiere at international film festivals this year.
"The Golden West" is set in 1849, White said on social media while sharing the official trailer for the upcoming film.
"Having fled the Great Famine, two warring Irish sisters search for gold in the mountains of North Wales," White said.
"But with winter approaching and nothing to show for their efforts, their age-old feud soon threatens to become deadly."
"The Gold West" stars Irish Film and Television Academy Award (IFTA) winner Eileen Walsh, who previously starred in "The Magdalene Sisters" (2002) and the hit comedy series "Catastrophe." She's joined by Aoife Duffin who starred in Sky’s "Moone Boy" and BBC’s one-off comedy "Bump."
“It’s a project we’ve been working on for the last year and a half, so we’re incredibly excited to get it out into the world in front of audiences,” Ross told the Belfast Telegraph.
“We were both fascinated by the famine and the gold rush as isolated events, but when the penny dropped that there was an overlap between the time periods, it seemed a fitting backdrop for a quite literal ‘feast or famine’ style Celtic Western.”
Berkeley, who was born in England, told The Belfast Telegraph that the duo was "drawn towards all different kinds of stories" and that it was great to explore something that “lives in a different wheelhouse tonally” to "An Irish Goodbye," which scooped an Oscar earlier this year.
“But while there are a lot of differences, we think there’s a strand of the same black comedy DNA in there that lives through all of our projects,” Berkeley added.
"The Golden West" marks the White and Berkeley's final short film project as the duo is now set to focus on feature-length projects. Back in April, they were signed by WME in the US and Independent Talent Group in the UK.
Ross said that he and White are "excited to get our heads down and begin writing our debut feature film."