It began with an everyday image. Blink and you'd miss it - see it and you might never even register it as significant. But for David Gleeson this is how THE FRONT LINE began.

In early 2003 the filmmaker was driving through Dublin's north inner city. Standing guard outside a bank was an African immigrant. He was dressed in an ill-fitting uniform. His cap was too big for his head' his jacket hung long and loose and his trousers were hitched up. In a rough' tough neighbourhood he stood out like a sore thumb. Yet Gleeson noticed the look on the man's face. Here was someone pleased as punch with his job and position. That snapshot triggered a sequence of questions in Gleeson's head. Where did this man come from? What was his history? Was he a refugee from a terrible war-torn country? What were his circumstances now? How long would he last in that job?

David Gleeson previously wrote and directed the feature film COWBOYS and ANGELS' an upbeat rites of passage tale set in his hometown of Limerick. The film' which was produced by his wife' Nathalie Lichtenthaeler' was critically well received and reached a wide global audience. Now' out of the corner of his eye' he had seen a moment which would form the basis for his second feature film.

Initially however he was wary of shooting a genre movie. The one page synopsis for THE FRONT LINE which he subsequently wrote was one of three on which he was working. Through the encouragement of colleagues' especially his wife Nathalie' he developed this one into a script.

"Many people commented that the synopsis for THE FRONT LINE was very interesting'" says Nathalie Lichtenthaeler' who was to eventually raise the finance for the production. "The other two projects were very big films and probably wouldn't have been viable for us at that point. I suggested to David that as he already had the basis for a very workable script in THE FRONT LINE - a beginning' a middle and an end - that he should write and explore it." So he did' booking into a TV-less hotel room for a week and emerging with the first' rough draft' of the screenplay.

THE FRONT LINE is set in the boomtown of Dublin among the immigrant community. Its pitch is the thin line between law and disorder' between the police and gangsters' between Irish nationals and non-nationals. This is THE FRONT LINE. "The title suggests a war' which in effect is the state of mind which the battle-scarred Joe Yumba is forced to revert to. He has come from a war zone and ends up in another on the streets of Dublin'" says David Gleeson.

The backdrop is a new Ireland where the economy is purring and business - both legal and illegal - is booming. "The script was written in 2003 when Gardai were predicting the rise of West Africans in the control of the crack trade in Dublin. I worked this into the screenplay to make it realistic and give in a relevance for 2006." But while THE FRONT LINE is packaged as a thriller' the story it tells stretches beyond genre and borders.

"I have no particular interest in the gangster genre'" says Gleeson. "Initially I was quite reluctant to do this as my next film. I wrote it as a one-page synopsis in about 20 minutes. A few people read it and always reverted to it saying they thought it was a really interesting premise. Nathalie persuaded me to go ahead and write it. At the very least we figured I could sell the screenplay. But as I wrote and as Joe's story emerged I became more attached to the project and it became very personal to me. My baby. Of course' I had to direct it. I have one simple criterion with every film I make - I always assume it'll be the last one I do so I ask myself what do I want to say to the world from this platform. So it better be worthwhile saying. I never saw this as just a straight thriller. This film has something to say."

After completing a draft of THE FRONT LINE Gleeson got in touch with John O'Shea from the Irish aid agency' GOAL. In February 2004 he travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) under the wing of the agency. "Out of respect I needed to do all I could to understand these people. I had to know what they sound and look like'" he says. "I felt that I should know their background and the landscape they come from so that I could direct with some kind of authority and deliver a movie of authenticity."

David Gleeson spent 6 weeks in Africa. He also visited the Kenyan capital' Nairobi' where he met many Congolese refugees in the world's largest slum city and travelled extensively throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo. "I met people who had been in similar situations to the main characters in the film'" he says. "These were people who had been through real horror. Unimaginable acts of barbarity. They helped me to understand' in as much as anyone can' why people would pick up a machete and kill - Why ordinary decent people would be driven to do that."

Gleeson read up extensively on the ongoing conflict in the DRC - an anarchic conflict which has resulted in the deaths of more than 3 million people (some people say 5 million - no one knows for sure). From his travels' his research and his direct experience' Gleeson fine-tuned his screenplay' using the backdrop of the Congo to give a dramatic impetus to the tale of African immigrants trying to make a new life in Dublin.

With the script completed the funding for the film had to be nailed down. Gleeson credits the key player in that process. "Nathalie is without doubt one of the finest producers in Europe'" he says. "She financed THE FRONT LINE in six months which is an incredible achievement. Considering that she was heavily pregnant throughout the whole process makes her a superwoman. It did help of course that I was no longer a first-time director and that COWBOYS and ANGELS had been a success'" comments Gleeson. "We also had a terrific screenplay. The finance came quickly on the basis of the screenplay. People responded to it' primarily to the genre element. THE FRONT LINE also happens to deal with many of the issues that HOTEL RWANDA' SHOOTING DOGS and a number of other movies about Rwanda deal with. But THE FRONT LINE is unique in that it deals with these issues from a European perspective. It brings the African question home and ties it into all our lives here."

For Nathalie Lichtenthaeler the screenplay made her job that much easier. "THE FRONT LINE is very different from other recent movies concerning the African experience'" she says. "It explores similar issues but sets the story in a western democracy. Also' there hasn't been a film like THE FRONT LINE made in Ireland before. It is a very big and ambitious movie. It's a wonderful experience to make such a movie and have something to say."

For Gleeson there is something that links THE FRONT LINE' his sophomore movie' with his debut feature. "THE FRONT LINE seems such a different film from COWBOYS and ANGELS but what they have in common is that they are both about outsiders - people who don't belong but try to fit in and often fail miserably'" he says. "I lived in Germany for five years and for the first couple of years I didn't speak German so I felt quite isolated. I used to be scared in shops that someone would speak to me in German because I wouldn't be able to answer them. Then I looked at African immigrants on the streets of Frankfurt and unlike me' where I could pass for German and I had a German wife' I wondered what it must be like for them. I thought these people were really on the front line. That always stuck in my head. I think that's really where the title and my interest in this subject matter came from. The security guard outside the bank was the catalyst."

English actor JAMES FRAIN was cast as the ruthless Dublin ganglord' Eddie Gilroy. Recently seen opposite Jessica Alba in INTO THE BLUE and on TV's 24 and INVASION' Frain has built up an impressive career on stage' in film and on TV on both sides of the Atlantic. "James Frain was the first head shot that was presented to me as a possibility. I said 'Perfect!'. We contacted him in Los Angeles' forwarded the screenplay and he said he'd do it. I didn't think he would' but thankfully he did. He's an incredible actor."

Frain was immediately impressed by Gleeson's screenplay. "I thought the script had an original take on an Irish movie'" he says. "I was intrigued by Joe's story and was interested to see black African characters as sympathetic heroes for a white audience. It made a pleasant change from the usual stereotypes. I am also a fan of genre movies and I liked that this was essentially a thriller. I think you can say a lot with genre that becomes preachy in an art-house type film. In other words genre forces real discipline on the film-maker. If this works as a thriller then the ideas about how Dublin is changing' race and injustice and all the rest will resonate in their own way. It was interesting to be there last year and to see how much has changed since my last working experience in '96 when I made NOTHING PERSONAL in the city."

In an attempt to understand Eddie Gilroy and his motivation' Frain dug deep into the screenplay. "Gilroy's clearly very ambitious and relentless in the pursuit of a lifestyle he feels he deserves' but there's a hollowness to him'" he says. "I got the sense that he and his brother came from a background where violence and abuse felt normal."

Frain had to work hard' with the help of a dialogue coach' to perfect Gilroy's hard edged Dublin accent. "It was very difficult for me'" he says. "I had done a Northern accent in NOTHING PERSONAL in 1996 and that sound kept ringing in my ears. The urban Dublin dialect is very specific and I hadn't heard it much before. I had some help at the beginning from the excellent Brendan Gunn and also from another very good voice coach and as the shoot went on I got more confident."

"Eddie doesn't have a relationship with Joe. Joe's just in the way. There's a weird moment when he recognizes a sort of madness in Joe which he has in himself. I thought it was interesting' but I don't think Eddie is the kind of guy to think about that much. There's more interest from Eddie in Fatou's character who seems to get to Eddie and unsettle him. This seems to trigger a sort of chaotic reaction. I do think Eddie's control slips badly after he misjudges Joe. He never comes back from this point."

"What is intriguing about the character of Eddie Gilroy is that he is a mixture of someone who is really nasty and a killer but there is also a vulnerability about him'" observes Lichtenthaeler. "James Frain has that mixture in him - that dangerous' nasty person you could maybe fall in love with."

If Gilroy was gangster number one' Gleeson needed to put together a gang which would be both credible as a unit and yet convincing as individual characters. "It was important when I was casting the gang that it didn't end up as a gang of caricatures - like the fat one' the clumsy one or whatever'" says Gleeson. "It's so easy to fall into stereotyping and cliche. We cast the gang like putting a boy band together. I think we auditioned practically every young actor in the country. We put the pictures of prospective candidates on the wall and looked to see who fit with who. In the end we went for GARRET LOMBARD' FEIDLIM CANNON and MACLEAN BURKE. Three great actors who complement and play off each other and James Frain wonderfully."

THE FRONT LINE is a contemporary film set in a modern western city. The genre is' to put it in broad terms' a thriller. The central narrative impetus is a game of cat and mouse involving police' criminals and the immigrant community. It is set in a Dublin that is mean' moody and ever changing - a night-city of trouble and a day city of deceit. "Dublin really looks spectacular in THE FRONT LINE. We shot it in a very edgy fashion. KOYAANISQUATSI was a style I referenced'" says David Gleeson. "I was keen to avoid prettifying the city too much. In that I failed. The city still looks spectacular."

The director of photography is Volker Tittel who has previously worked with Gleeson on COWBOYS and ANGELS. After that movie both men were intent on collaborating again on a bigger' more complex project. For Tittel' THE FRONT LINE was an intriguing proposition - a fast-paced thriller which also had something to say about modern life. "THE FRONT LINE has two sides to it'" he says. "On the one hand regarding the bad guys it tells a very classical 'take the money and run' story. On the other hand' in the characters of its more heroic protagonists Joe Yumba or Detective Harbison' crucial contemporary issues are explored - guilt' responsibility and respect towards others - regardless how foreign and incomprehensible those others might appear to us. And in the centre of our film there are the unique and individual fates of some refugees' a police officer and a psychopath. This is the heart and the blood of THE FRONT LINE."

He and Gleeson collaborated closely on how they should shoot the story. "I was deeply touched when I first read the script" says Tittel. "So my initial thought was how can we get that same feeling for the audience? Such an artistic aim is not easy to achieve. The narrow path between "kitsch" or mere entertainment and the serious dramatic development of characters is a great challenge. Mere action is rather easy to achieve' as it is simply a matter of equipment' technique and organisation - in other words' a money thing. But to find credible artistic expression through the camera work' to capture the different emotional states of all the different characters and to achieve this through the choice of lighting and camera-movements' is the "high end" of moviemaking for a DoP. I felt this challenge while studying the screenplay and was curious to go for it!"

Gleeson had a very specific brief for his cinematographer. "In the beginning David did have a certain vision about the style of his new film. He had hundreds of pages of storyboards already drawn - thousands of sketches. But he was still open to new ideas and improvements'" says Tittel. "We discussed the look of the film for weeks - whether we should use handheld camera or HD technology with a lot of visual effects or do the complete contrary by shooting in 35mm Cinemascope. It was in September 2005 as David and I drove through Dublin on a rainy night. We talked about music for the film and listened to some vocals he intended to use. It was a beautiful female singer' very soft' slow and solemn. I think that night we had the major breakthrough in our discussions about the look of the film. We decided I should follow the characters of the film with my camera in an honest and respectful manner. No dirty camera or no arthouse style. Instead it would be a sort of "story-supporting" camera style. Classic 35mm with classical camera movements and dramatic but still realistic lighting."

Closely collaborating with Gleeson and Tittel was the production designer Jim Furlong. Like Tittel' he had previously worked with Gleeson on COWBOYS and ANGELS. "I read the script and thought it was a really good page turner' he says. "We all agreed that this film should have a different look. A lot of contemporary Irish films gravitate towards flat lands and council estates so they have a certain look. With THE FRONT LINE we wanted to get a much more international look. We wanted to get some of the storyline out of the apartments and into more exciting locations' some of these being in Hamburg where we shot for two weeks."

For Furlong' finding suitable locations in Hamburg presented its own challenges. The trick was to make sure that the German locations blended in with the Dublin cityscape of the movie. So at one stage Furlong was spending a lot of time in the German port city tracking down exteriors that would fit into the production design jigsaw puzzle. He found old factory warehouses that had closed down and these offered "exciting new looks that you could not find in Dublin anymore." For one dramatic scene the Hamburg docks stood in for Dublin port. "We shot at night time and so the lighting was low'" he says. "So it could easily have been Dublin. But the effect is incredibly dramatic."

THE FRONT LINE was shot in six frantic weeks in late 2005 in Dublin. The various locations included the inner-city street markets of Moore Street. The police station exterior was shot on Stephen's Green. The lobby and exterior of the bank was a solicitor's office. The inner city flat complex was shot in Clancy Barracks and the vault and corridors of the bank were built in Ardmore studios as were the police interview rooms. "It was a very tough shoot'" says Gleeson. "We had a hell of a lot to do in six weeks. Seven weeks would have been much more realistic for such a complex movie. But we got it done on a wing and a prayer' especially prayer. The Irish Film Board was very complimentary and told us they had never seen a movie which completed every day and never dropped a single shot' let alone a scene."

One of the most complex sequences in the film involves a tense stand-off on Henry Street where Joe Yumba is to meet the gang who are holding Daniel captive inside a department store. This involved a major crowd scene and a complex fight sequence. It was shot on the crowded shopping streets of the Irish capital a few weeks before Christmas. "The thing is that we only had about 100 extras but about 200 Christmas shoppers joined in and followed all our directions'" says Gleeson. "In that scene' shot outside Roches Stores on Henry Street' Joe sees Daniel being held by the kidnappers in the big window upstairs. There is a big fight on the street involving Joe and a thug and then a gang member gets involved and pulls a gun. Our own extras and about two hundred shoppers were all screaming and running. There were people on their knees. It was pretty special' quite unlike anything you will ever have seen in an Irish film before. We really nailed that scene. As it was so complex we had to shoot it over two consecutive weekends. The first weekend it was dry' no rain' so to cover ourselves in case it was raining when we came back we shot it two ways' one with umbrellas and one without. Thankfully it never rained."

Tittel recounts the events of that day. "We had one day to complete the scene'" he says. "In David's storyboard there were more than 30 shots so there was a lot of stuff to shoot and we were very busy the whole day. After a while the big crowd of passers-by mixed in with our extras in a scene that involved shouting' running' fighting' guns and blood. To me this was a little bit scary but people in Ireland seemed to be used to violence and gangsters! For instance' all that one old lady complained about was the bad language being shouted. I thought that was pretty cool. It was our best decision to shoot this scene with Steadicam and we were lucky to have Michael Ole Nilson from Hamburg' one of the best Steadicam-operators in Germany. Through our detailed preparation' the storyboard and the professional crew in the director's department we got the job done on schedule without any problems. And the result looks great."

The pivotal meeting between Joe Yumba and the shadowy underworld figure of Erasmus was originally to be shot in an apartment. But Gleeson wanted to open out the film more and needed a more dramatic backdrop. As the production had to shoot in Hamburg for ten days for financing reasons they were struggling to find enough scenes to shoot there. Gleeson wondered if this scene could be relocated somewhere in the German port city. "The harbour was the obvious choice. It's an incredibly cinematic location. It really opens up the film and gives it a real sense of scale. This is one of my favourite scenes in the film now."

Dublin and Hamburg also combined to complete the Immigration Bureau offices. "We used the exterior of the College of Surgeons on Dublin's Stephen's Green for a busy city centre police station'" says Jim Furlong. "We were lucky in that that building had space outside to film without interfering with city-centre traffic. There was also a Luas tram which ran past. That gave the location a modern city look. The interior was shot in an office suite in Hamburg which we did some work on. It had to be modern looking and quite sophisticated' with the relevant hi-tech equipment required for tracking criminals."

The bank' both exterior and interior' is in effect a complex composite of different locations and set builds. "The bank vault was a build'" says Furlong. "We used a lawyers' office reception area for the bank itself. We would get in there at five in the morning and make all the changes to the reception area to turn it into the look of a commercial bank - in other words elegant and minimalist. This was for people who would be used to talking about major investments and deals. That was the style we wanted to capture. We were fortunate in that we were able to use the same building for the exterior of the bank."

The interior of the Garda building split between Ardmore Studios and a studio in Hamburg. The police interview rooms were built there in Ardmore so that the camera could have maximum movement for a series of dramatic sequences. "There was a particularly exciting scene in there and the camera needed space for that. We also needed the look and the colours to correspond."

"For me the most dramatic scene takes place in Gilroy's apartment' where the gang and their hostages are hiding out'" says Tittel. "That is the scene before Joe is going into the heavy action against the gangsters. I like this scene very much."

Eddie Gilroy is a ruthless criminal with a sense of style which marks him out from the pack. For Preston, this attitude is subtly sewn into his wardrobe. "Because it is a contemporary story and we have seen all the gangsters in crombies, I wanted to make this look very young," she says. "Eddie Gilroy hangs out with these young criminals. He still does drugs and he still drinks. He stays up all night and does the clubs. So he wears contemporary clothes. I didn't necessarily want to give him a leather jacket look as that was too pedestrian. So I saw this white suede coat with a fur collar and thought, 'That is Eddie'. I put it on the rail and when James walked in he saw it immediately and he loved it. Of course I lied when I told him that every gangster in Dublin wore that kind of coat."

But Frain himself was seeing Gilroy in the same light as Preston. "I had the notion that Eddie was very narcissistic and image conscious," he says. "I don't know why. I was impressed with the costume design ideas as they felt right to me. A sort of vanity and preciousness to him, despite his ruthlessness. That just felt right."