Brooklyn exclusive at Ayala Cinemas

MANILA, Philippines - Ayala Malls Cinemas brings Brooklyn, tomorrow, Jan. 27, a very poignant story of a young woman who dreams of a better life abroad, leaves her mother and sister to a foreign land very different from the culture she grew up in and eventually finds herself torn between two men from her hometown and new town.

Saoirse Ronan has been reaping awards left and right for her role in Brooklyn. Born in New York to Irish parents and raised outside Dublin, Ronan first found acclaim in Joe Wright’s Atonement, garnering a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as Briony. She went on to starring roles in The Lovely Bones, Hanna and most recently Wes Anderson’s Oscar-winning The Grand Budapest Hotel, all by age 20. Now entering her prime, she was ready to take on a complicated, emotionally demanding lead. 

Brooklyn has opened in Ireland to become the highest-opening Irish film since Michael Collins in 1996 that starred Liam Neeson. It tells of a beautiful and resilient Irish young woman Eilis (Ronan) and her journey between two countries, two men and two destinies.

In Brooklyn, Eilis (Ronan) has lived her whole life in tiny Enniscorthy, Ireland — where everyone knows everyone else’s business and then some — when she is swept away to America, thanks to her sister, who wants to see her flourish. She arrives into the diverse tumult of Brooklyn already homesick, feeling like an exile. But as Eilis dexterously learns to adapt to life as a New Yorker and becomes a saleslady at a posh department store, she meets a funny, sweet, charismatic suitor determined to win her devotion. Just as she seems on the verge of beginning a new life, a family tragedy brings her back to Ireland where she is pulled back into the life she left behind… and a decision that could affect her future forever. 

Caught between two different calls to her heart, Eilis confronts one of the most breathtakingly difficult dilemmas of our fluid modern world: Figuring out how to merge where you have come from with where you dream of going. Ronan says she felt an immediate, almost uncanny, affinity for Eilis as soon as she read the script. “Nick Hornby isn’t from Ireland, yet he managed to completely capture the spirit of the country. The writing was so beautiful, and so beautifully subtle,” she comments. “It felt close to my heart because it was about my people. It was the journey that my parents went on back in the ‘80s; they moved to New York and went through all these same things, even though it was a different era. The biggest hurdle anyone goes through in life is leaving the security of your family and your friends behind for something new.”

The mix of emotions that Eilis confronts — from confusion and grief to joy and devotion — was also an exciting challenge as Ronan calibrated the balance between them.

Brooklyn is showing exclusively at select Ayala Malls Cinemas — Glorietta 4, Trinoma, Market!Market! and Fairview Terraces from 20th Century Fox through Warner Bros.