The Legend of Barney Thomson trailer launch

The World Premiere of Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut feature, THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON will take place tonight 17 June as Opening Night of EIFF 2015 at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh.

Cast in attendance will include Robert Carlyle, Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen, Tom Courtenay, James Cosmo, Martin Compston, Kevin Guthrie, Stephen McCole, Samuel Robertson and Brian Pettifer. The UK theatrical release by Icon Film Distribution will follow in UK and Ireland on 24 July.

In addition to directing the film, Carlyle plays the titular antihero Barney, alongside a standout supporting cast including Emma Thompson, in one of the most transformative roles of her career, Ray Winstone, Tom Courtenay, Ashley Jensen and Martin Compston. Adapted from a highly successful, darkly comic crime novel series, THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON is a gutsy, macabre and hilarious crime thriller, with a pitch-perfect performance from Carlyle as the archetypal underdog.

THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON tells the tale of Barney (Carlyle), a hapless barber, devoid of charm and 'patter' as his fellow barbering brethren mockingly remind him. Barney's mediocre, mundane life of plotting for a way up is about to be transformed, following a typically incompetent fit of pique, when he inadvertently stumbles into serial murder, and with it headlong into the trail of a grotesque series of killings gripping Glasgow. As he makes ham-fisted attempts to cover his tracks, he finds himself on the run from the bearish Detective Inspector Holdall (Winstone) and a testosterone-driven local Police task force at each others throats over the ongoing crimes. With his sanity threatening to unravel, Barney fatefully turns to his domineering, emasculating mother, the formidable Glaswegian 'good-time girl', Cemolina (Thompson). There's no turning back now and the path that lies ahead for Barney may yet be littered with more murderous consequences than he could have ever anticipated.