Newport Beach Film Festival
Newport Beach Film Festival

#IrishAbroad: 17th Newport Beach Film Festival to shine a spotlight on Irish film

Towards the end of the month the 17th annual Newport Beach Film Festival in California will present its Irish Spotlight, featuring a host of new Irish cinema.The festival is well known in North America for its Irish content, having screened 59 Irish features and shorts over the last few years.

The Spotlight will include a special screening of Simon Fitzmaurice’s My Name is Emily, which will be followed by a post-event celebration. Other Irish feature films screening at the Newport Beach Film Festival include Love & Friendship, directed by Whit Stillman and starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny, and You’re Ugly Too, directed by Mark Noonan and staring Aidan Gillen and Lauren Kinsella.

The Festival will also celebrate outstanding short films from Ireland with two special Irish short film selections. The After ’16 shorts, commissioned by the Irish Film Board to celebrate the centenary of the 1916 Rising will make their US west coast premiere. Additionally, the Irish Shorts programme will screen. This is a curated collection of some of the strongest Irish films on the international festival circuit which features several North American premieres, including those of Love is a Sting (Vincent Gallagher ), Violet (Maurice Joyce), Blight (Brian Deane), City of Roses (Andrew Kavanagh), The Clockmaker’s Dream (Cashell Horgan), Woman of the House (Aidan Gibson). Also playing is US star Aisha Tyler’s Irish shot short The Shadow of Our Togetherness (Ar Scáth le Chéile), featuring Emmett Hughes, Dean Rossiter, and Emma Eliza Regan. And in Shorts Action section  Beauty & Chaos from director James Skerritt plays.

The Newport Beach Film Festival places an emphasis on support for emerging and respected filmmakers through encouraging people of all ages and backgrounds to participate. The festival has the largest shorts program within a major film festival in the United States, accepting and screening well over 200 short movies selected from submissions received from all over the world.

The 17th annual Newport Beach Film Festival will be held from April 21st  to 28th.