The ‘almost too crazy to be true’ bank robbery that inspired a new Irish-Australian film

Australian actor Madeleine Madden calls the audacious Irish robbery that cost the National Australia Bank $67 million more than two decades ago – equivalent to almost $120 million now – “almost too crazy to be true”.

And it was. Just before Christmas in 2004, a gang kidnapped the relatives of two workers in the NAB-owned Northern Bank in Belfast late at night. The next day, the robbers had them send the rest of the staff home early, stash more than a million pounds in a bag, then deliver it to a gang member outside.

When that test run was successful, they ordered the two workers to load all the cash from an underground vault onto trolleys, disguised to look like rubbish to fool the bank’s security guards.

There was so much cash that, as carol singers entertained crowds in sub-zero temperatures nearby, the gang took more than two hours to transfer it all to a waiting truck.

After what was described at the time as one of the world’s largest bank robberies, the gang released the kidnapped relatives and escaped. While the IRA was suspected, the case has never been solved.

More than two decades on, Madden stars as an AFP officer investigating the robbery in a new Irish-Australian film, Chasing Millions, which will screen on opening night of the Irish Film Festival next month, ahead of a cinema release.

“It really lends itself to being quite an exciting heist film,” she says.

Madden, who is best known for streaming series Picnic at Hanging Rock, Tidelands and The Wheel of Time, as well as the films Dora and the Lost City of Gold and Saccharine, stars opposite Christopher Eccleston (Dr Who), who plays a grizzled Irish detective.

While it was shot in Ireland, directed by Ireland’s Stephen Burke (Maze), and the other actors are Irish, the Australian involvement includes Katherine Thomson co-writing the script and Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie composing original music.

Madden, 29, says the starring role in Chasing Millions happened suddenly.

“I got a call from my agent and they said, ‘There’s this film that’s shooting over in [Ireland] and it’s a two-hander with Christopher Eccleston; if you’re going to do it, they would like to close in the next 24 hours’,” she says. “I was, ‘Wait, what?’ Then, ‘Absolutely, that sounds great’.”

Three weeks later, Madden was in Ireland preparing for a shoot that had a familiar energy to Australian productions she had worked on but included a new challenge.

“Doing comedy is something that, like, really terrifies me because the stakes are probably the highest as a performer,” she says. “I was feeling an immense amount of pressure but was reassured along the way that we were doing good work.

“There’s something very similar about Australian and Irish humour, so that was also something that was really helpful.

Madden, who grew up in Redfern in Sydney’s inner city, used the trip to research Irish descendants of her distinguished family.

Her grandfather was the late Indigenous civil rights activist Charles Perkins, her mother is art curator and writer Hetti Perkins, her aunt is filmmaker Rachel Perkins, her brother Tyson is a cinematographer, and her sisters Miah and Thea are an actor and artist respectively.

“I consider myself incredibly lucky that I’ve got a family who are not just involved in the arts but particularly in the film industry,” she says. “You can always lean on them when you need support or guidance.”

Madden says the family all feel a responsibility to carry on her grandfather’s legacy, which included leading the Freedom Ride in 1965 to raise awareness of Indigenous issues and advocating for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people throughout his life.

“Everyone has different ways of activism,” she says. “As I’ve been getting older I feel my sense of commitment and duty to the community has definitely deepened.

“His legacy absolutely continues today and I always just think that if I can do a fraction of the work that he did for our community, I’d be incredibly proud of myself. Even though he’s not with us, he’s still very much a constant presence in our family.”

The Irish Film Festival runs in Sydney from October 8-11 and in Melbourne from October 22-25, with online screenings from October 8-November 15. Chasing Millions opens in cinemas on November 19.