Back in January 2007, "Once" won the "World Cinema Audience Award" at the Sundance Festival. With the "simple, classic story of two artists who fall in love with each other", director and screenwriter John Carney delighted audiences and critics alike. Carney chose his former bandmate Glen Hansard (who had already starred in "The Commitments") as the lead. The female lead went to Markéta Irglová, who had worked with Hansard on his solo album "The Swell Season". The film scenes take place in places where music normally occurs, such as a piano shop, a recording studio, a guitar room, a pedestrian zone; the songs all take place in front of the camera and develop as a completely natural element within the overall plot.