Samuel Beckett Biopic DANCE FIRST Starring Gabriel Byrne to Close San Sebastian Film Festival

According to The Hollywood Reporter, DANCE FIRST, the Samuel Beckett biopic directed by Oscar winner James Marsh, will close the 71st San Sebastian Film Festival, running September 22nd through 30.

Tony nominee Gabriel Byrne will play the Nobel Prize-winning playwright in the film, with Sandrine Bonnaire as Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, Beckett's wife.

Penned by Neil Forsyth, the film is named after Beckett's famous philosophy of "Dance first, think later". The film is described to be "a sweeping account of the life of this icon of 20th-century literature."

Marsh won an Oscar for Best Documentary for his "Man on Wire" feature in 2009. He also directed Eddie Redmayne in the 2015 Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything.

Byrne has starred in more than 60 feature films including Millers Crossing, The Usual Suspects, Excalibur, Into the West, Little Women, Dead Man, The End of Violence, The Man in the Iron Mask, Vanity Fair, Jindabyne and Wah-Wah. He recently completed The 33 and Louder Than Bombs.

On Broadway, Gabriel received a Tony nomination for his performance in Eugene O'Neill's Moon for the Misbegotten and he won the Outer Critics Circle Award for his performance in A Touch of the Poet. Gabriel starred as Dr. Paul Weston in HBO's In Treatment, for which he received the Golden Globe Award and was nominated twice for the Emmy.