This is the first look at Saoirse Ronan in her dark new role – playing a kidnap victim in a harrowing new film.
The Carlow star plays an “emotionally stunted” woman who is abducted and held prisoner in movie Stockholm, Pennsylvania.

The film shows Saoirse’s character slowly begin to develop feelings for her kidnapper after several years held captive.

It also shows her failing to maintain a relationship with her family when she is released – echoing a number of high-profile real-life stories.
It will be premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in America next month, which the 20-year-old filmed in just 19 days on a tiny budget.
She said: “It’s about a girl called Leia who’s in her early twenties. At the start she’s rescued, after seven years, from her kidnapper, who raised her in a basement.

“She has never seen the light of day until she is handed back to her biological parents in the second scene, but she doesn’t know these people.
“It’s mainly about the relationship between Leia and her mother, and how she doesn’t see why it’s wrong to be completely in love (in a childlike way) with her kidnapper, despite what he did.”

This year, Saoirse will also be seen in Brooklyn, which she filmed with Domhnall Gleeson.

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Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Nixon have been set to star in Stockholm, Pennsylvania, a psychological thriller scripted and to be directed by Nikole Beckwith. Pic marks her feature helmer debut and production begins next week in Los Angeles. The film is an adaptation of the play, and the script made the 2012 Black List and won the 2012 Nicholl Fellowship and came through the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. Greg Ammon is producing through his banner Fido Features in association with Olympus Pictures’ Leslie Urdang and Dan Halsted.

Ronan stars as developmentally stunted Leia, a young woman raised by a kidnapper who now struggles to acclimate to her actual parents after 20 years of separation. Nixon plays the girl’s grief-stricken mother, who goes to extreme lengths to recapture her daughter’s love. Jason Isaacs plays her captor, and David Warshofsky plays her father. Fido Features is a production/finance company that recently wrapped Shiva & May, the Diane Bell-helmed thriller that stars Jessica Biel and Zosia Mamet. Beckwith comes from the Public Theater’s Emerging Writer’s Group, and is repped by ICM Partners. Ronan, who will next be seen in the Susanne Bier-directed Mary Queen Of Scots and the Wes Anderson-directed The Grand Budapest Hotel, also stars in the Ryan Gosling-directed How To Catch A Monster. She’s repped by CAA and UK’s Macfarlane Chard. Nixon recently wrapped A Quiet Passion and Life Itself and James White, and stars in Amazon’s Alpha House and in the second season of NBC’s Hannibal. She is repped by UTA and Emily Gerson Saines at Brookside Artist Management. Isaac, who wrapped the WWII drama Fury and the NBC mini Rosemary’s Baby is repped by Gersh, ITG and Silver Lining, and Warshofsky is repped by Talentworks, Cornerstone and Patty Woo Management.