Shebeen Flick

#Festival: Shebeen Flick – Irish Film Festival Berlin to open with History’s Future on March 16th

The 2017 edition of Shebeen Flick – Irish Film Festival Berlin, which will take place from March 16th to the 19th, will open with the German premiere of the Irish co-production History’s Future by Fiona Tan, starring Mark O’Halloran (Adam & Paul) as the nameless main character of the story. The film will be preceded by the Academy Award winner for Best Live Action Short 2016, Stutterer from director Benjamin Cleary.

The opening will take place on Thursday, March 16th at 8pm at Kino Moviemento, with Mark O’Halloran in attendance. This year, the festival will screen a total of 25 films (feature-length and shorts), which is more than double the amount from last year. The full programme of the festival can now be found via www.shebeenflick.com.

Part fiction, part documentary, and part speculative essay on the contemporary world, History’s Future is about one man’s odyssey through a Europe in turmoil – and through his own mind. Losing his memory after a mugging, a man known only as ‘MP’ (Missing Person) leaves his home and sets out on a journey – in search not only for his memory but perhaps also for a new identity. On his travels from country to country, MP attempts to gain insight into the complexity of life in the 21st-century West – into what commentators have called an age of ‘rolling catastrophe’. In Stutterer an online relationship has helped a lonely typographer mask his cruel speech impediment. Now he is faced with the daunting prospect of finally bringing that relationship into the real world.

We are very honoured to open the festival with History’s Future and to have Mark O’Halloran joining us in Berlin. The film is a stunning piece of art and also of incredible relevance to the times we live in, both culturally and politically. We hope that by starting the festival with this film, we will set the tone for this year’s programme, which is aiming to capture today’s zeitgeist.
Fernanda Parente, Shebeen Flick’s Founder & Director

Another highlight of the festival is the documentary Mattress Men, directed by Colm Quinn, winner of the Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards 2016. In an attempt to save his struggling business, sixty-something Michael Flynn reinvents himself as the eccentric online persona ‘Mattress Mick’, under the guidance of his good friend Paul Kelly. As business begins to grow, their friendship starts to implode.

The festival will close with Darren Thornton’s A Date for Mad Mary, with the director also attending the festival, and Conor Horgan’s The Queen of Ireland, which focuses on the LGBT rights activist Panti Bliss (Rory O’Neill).

For more information about the festival: www.shebeenflick.com