Lesley McKimm has been working in film and television since 1991 and initially worked in a variety of roles including script supervision, production co-ordination, production manager, post-production supervisor and script development.
She became a producer in 1995 with the award winning short film 81, written and directed by Stephen Burke, which won numerous international awards. Other work in the late 1990’s included Relative Strangers - 4 x 50 t.v. drama series starring Brenda Fricker, for RTÉ and WDR (for Little Bird), In Search of Ancient Ireland – 3 x 1 hour documentary series for PBS and RTÉ (for Little Bird & Café), Home - a series of six half-hour documentaries for RTÉ (for Treasure Films) and Southpaw – feature length documentary which was released theatrically in Ireland, the U.K. and screened at Sundance (for Treasure Films as Line Producer).
She set up her own production company Comet Films in 1998 where she produced the 6 part drama series Any Time Now in 2002, for BBC 1, RTÉ 1 & Screen Ireland (formerly The Irish Film Board), and No Tears (4x 1hour) for RTÉ 1, in association with Little Bird, and the 35mm short film No No No (directed by Stephen Bradley). She also produced the Arts Lives documentary To Be or Not To Be for RTÉ, the Arts Council of Ireland and the Screen Ireland and the theatre show A Heart of Cork, for Cork 2005.
No Tears starred Brenda Fricker, Maria Doyle Kennedy and Tina Kellegher & was one of the most watched dramas on RTÉ, it won the Golden Nymph for best drama at Monte Carlo in 2002 and was selected as one of three Irish projects at INPUT in 2003. Any Time Now has sold to Australia (ABC), New Zealand (TVNZ), Finland (Channel 4) and Sweden (SVT) and won Iftas for Susan Lynch, Angeline Ball and Ruth McCabe.
She merged Comet Films with Newgrange Pictures in late 2006 and is now working alongside fellow producer Jackie Larkin. Newgrange Pictures was one of 10 Irish production companies to receive MPD (company slate) funding from Screen Ireland in Dec. 2006
Newgrange produced Happy Ever Afters, starring Golden Globe winter Sally Hawkins & Tom Riley it was released theatrically by Disney in Ireland, Verve in the UK, Haut et Court in France, Lucky Red in Italy & Senator in Germany. It was sold by Films Distribution. Kings (produced by Jackie Larkin, directed by Tom Collins and starring Colm Meaney) was the first ever Irish film to be selected for the Foreign Language category of the Academy Awards. It had its’ world premiere at the Taormina Film Festival and was selected for the Contemporary World Cinema Section of the Toronto International Film Festival 2007. Newgrange also co-produced the German-Austrian film Kill Daddy, Goodnight which had its world premier at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009. Lesley also executive produced the 2 part TV drama Whistleblowerr (with Saffron Pictures) for RTE 1, which won the Best Drama IFTA 2009. Projects developed and produced over the last number of years include feature films My Name is Emily (Wri/Dir Simon Fitzmaurice with Kennedy Films), the documentary It's Not Yet Dark (dir Frankie Fenton), as well as international co-productions The King's Choice, The Last King, Call Girl, A Thousand Times Goodnight.
She is graduate of EAVE (1998) and the Media Business School (2002)
Fís Éireann / Screen Ireland announced the appointment of Lesley to Screen Ireland's Production and Development team, in the role of Project Manager in September 2016. In this role, Lesley will manage part of the slate of Screen Ireland supported projects across all genres from the initial development stage right through production financing, to the market exploitation of these projects.
