Exclusive: Clive Owen Warns Andrea Riseborough in Intense Poster for ‘Shadow Dancer’

“Shadow Dancer,” the narrative thriller from James Marsh (“Project Nim,” “Man on Wire”), which premiered at Sundance and screened at Berlin, has a new poster (exclusive to Indiewire) that depicts the somber intensity of the film’s story.

Based on the novel of the same name by Tom Bradby, who also adapted the screenplay, “Shadow Dancer” stars Andrea Riseborough (“W.E.,” “Made in Dagenham”) as single mother and IRA member Collette McVeigh. The history of the IRA is a complicated one and to those of us in America who don’t know it — or who aren’t somewhat familiar thanks to Steve McQueen’s “Hunger”– it is an Irish paramilitary organization which fought to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom beginning in 1969. “Shadow Dancer,” which takes place in the 1990s, follows Collette after she is arrested by MI5 officer Mac (Clive Owen) for a bomb plot in London. Mac gives Collette the choice of prison or of becoming an informant for the British government by spying on her own family.

The poster for the film, grainy and stark, shows an intense Owen and a conflicted Riseborough with the text “Talk to us and you’re out of here. Nobody dies. Nobody gets hurt.” Riseborough’s Collette has the look of a woman terrified to betray her family, but desperate for the chance to see them again. In an interview with Indiewire at Sundance last year, the actress described her character’s complicated situation as something which “forced her into a state of verbal paralysis and almost calm.”

“Shadow Dancer” will be released in the U.S. by Magnolia Pictures On Demand April 25 and theatrically on May 31.

Check out the poster below.