Now that he was ‘Academy Award Winner Neil Jordan’, his ascendant stock brought him the long-gestating screen version of the first volume in Anne Rice’s million-selling Vampire Chronicles.

If the presence of Messrs. Cruise and Pitt hint at some Hollywood sell-out, the reality is a surprisingly uncompromised vision – a dark and brooding affair, whose vampire theme allows Jordan to ponder the moral borderlines of our very humanity.

Cruise and Pitt excel in their contrasting takes on the awful temptations of immortality, but the standout is 12-year-old Kirsten Dunst, truly chilling as a soulless fiend trapped in a child’s body.

Showing as part of our Neil Jordan Retrospective which runs throughout May. His new film, Byzantium, opens on May 31st.

See our online exhibition of some of Neil Jordan’s substantial document collections held by the IFI Irish Film Archive.