A new coming of age filming aiming to highlight all aspects of student life in the Holylands is set to begin filming this summer.
The UnHolylands, set in the notorious South Belfast student area, will follow two brothers in their final week of university, coming to terms with graduating while leaving behind their wild life in the Holylands.
Director Paddy Duffy, a film graduate from Queen's University, said it is "exciting times ahead" as his vision enters the final stages of pre-production before filming in July.
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Speaking to Belfast Live, Paddy, 24, said: "When I came up with the idea a few years ago, the main reason behind it was because the Holylands seemed absolutely mad - about seven years ago, I was a culchie from Fermanagh hearing about this place and being shown videos of life.
"Maybe it was the immaturity at the time of me and my friends but we were infatuated by it and thought it was absolutely hilarious and we hadn't seen anything like it before.
"There were lads who were older than me in school who we all looked up to doing all these mad things and we just thought it was class.
"This was the initial reason why we wanted to do this because we thought it hasn't been done before and it would be funny to make."
As Paddy was a student in the area himself, he quickly began to realise that there was much more to life in the Holylands than the anti-social behaviour you see on the news.
"A lot of the people we once thought were having the best craic actually had a lot of underlying issues that you would have never known.
"Some had money issues, family problems, a big one that I came across was alcohol and drug issues and a lot of them really hated the degree that they were actually doing - many feeling forced into it by parents and left feeling like failures.
"I realised that they were doing all these crazy things as an escape and once having looked up to them, we now sort of pitied them," he explained.
In The UnHolylands, Paddy does not want to excuse or diminish the consequences of this type of behaviour but hopes to show another side of life in the student area rarely explored.
He added: "If you were to look up the Holylands now, you are going to see 'thuggish student does this' and stories of vandalism and fighting, I want to make something to show that, believe it or not, students actually are people too with human issues."
Belfast-born actor Ciaran McCourt will be playing Michael, the more sensible of the two read the lead characters and said that after reading the script he "absolutely fell in love" with it.
Ciaran continued: "I always thought there was this niche for a Hoylands movie and the likes of Derry Girls speaks for itself. People love our humour.
"Paddy contacted me a few months ago with the idea - I went to uni in Manchester so I begrudgingly never lived the Holylands life.
"A lot of people in Belfast don't grow up wanting to go to the Holylands or want to move away but there was something the whole time I was away that made me a bit raging I wasn't there.
"I now get to vicariously live out my Holyland experience through this movie."
Production is all set to take place on location in the Holylands this summer.
"I think you have to film it authentically - I guess you could film it in the likes of Dunluce but I think you definitely need to be on location for a film like this," Ciaran added.
Paddy said: "When people watch the film, you will get to see that all students aren't too bad and I feel like the Holylands is something that all generations have an experience - parents may say this and that but they were young as well.
"While there is violence and people doing bad things, we want to show that it isn't everyone and there is much more to it."
Exciting young names in Northern Ireland's budding film industry will be joining the project and Paddy hopes the film will also give people interested in hands-on experience in the industry the opportunity
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