Irish Film at Dingle International Film Festival 2018

#Festival: Irish Film at Dingle International Film Festival 2018

Dingle IFF will present the extraordinary talent of Irish filmmakers. This selection depicts Ireland from the perspective of various natives and pays homage to Ireland’s historic and modern culture.  The festival, in partnership with Bord Scannán na hÉireann/ the Irish Film Board, will host a selection of critically acclaimed Irish films and welcome national stars this March 22nd-25th.

IFTA award winning, Barry Keoghan (The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Dunkirk) will participate in this year’s Dingle Pow-Wow. He performed in the hugely successful series Love/Hate. In 2017, Barry made his blockbuster debut with Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. The film grossed over €525 million worldwide, making it the most successful war movie ever made. The Dingle Pow-Wow brings together professional industry leaders from Ireland and abroad to discuss their careers. It is a unique and inspiring opportunity for young filmmakers to gain insight and knowledge into the global film and television industry.

Michael Inside – Feature Film 

Michael Inside Scannain Image

IFTA award winning feature directed by Frank Berry.

After agreeing to hold a bag of drugs for his friend’s older brother, Michael Healy is sentenced to three months in prison. Unaffiliated on the inside, the impressionable teen is attacked and robbed. As Michael’s life begins to change dramatically, his grandfather Francis gets an intimidating visit from local drug dealers looking for the money Michael has lost. Upon release Michael, now institutionalised into criminality, is forced to put into practice what he has learnt in prison when the dealers pay Francis another visit.

Click HERE for tickets.

Kissing Candice – Feature Film  

Kissing Candice

Both written and directed by Aoife McArdle, the film stars the IFTA-nominated Ann Skelly as Candice, a 17-year-old who longs to escape the boredom of her seaside town, only finding solace in her vivid imagination. When a boy she dreams about up in real life, she becomes increasingly entangled with a dangerous local gang. Filmed under the Irish Film Board’s Catalyst scheme, Aoife McArdle’s stylish debut feature centres around a small Irish seaside community.

Click HERE for tickets.

The Song of Granite – Feature Film 

Song of Granite

Acclaimed filmmaker Pat Collins brings the dramatic life story of legendary sean-nós singer Joe Heaney—an audacious exploration of the man and his music. With an approach that marries traditional narrative episodes with documentary footage, the film will celebrate the music Joe Heaney created while painting an unflinching portrait of Heaney, the man.

Song of Granite had the effect of making me weep for a deep part of our culture that I barely know. There can be no higher praise. An absolute masterpiece. – Jason Coyle, Scannain

Click HERE for tickets.

Lost & Found – Feature Film  

Liam O Mochain in Lost & Found
Liam O Mochain in Lost & Found

Lost & Found is a feature film with seven interconnecting stories set in and around a lost & found office of an Irish train station.  All segments are inspired by true stories, share a theme of something lost or found and characters that come in and out of each other’s lives.

“Crazy anthology film that gets by on energy and charm.”– Donald Clarke, Irish Times.

 Gustav – Short Film with Lost & Found 

Will is a young man with a bright future. He has a good job and a loving girlfriend.  He wakes up one morning with a strange tune in his head. But what is it? And where did it come from? The tune continues unrelentingly into his working day, until Will is forced to take drastic action.  He has no choice, he must sleep!

Click HERE for tickets for Lost and Found and Gustav.

The Silver Branch – Feature Film  

The Silver Branch
The Silver Branch

The Director Katrina Costello will also participate in their Dingle Pow-Wow.

The Silver Branch is an uplifting and emotional celebration of people and place. It captures the delicacy of the natural world; the heart and soul of a Burren farmer-poet, Patrick McCormack and the ancient rural spirit of Ireland which stands behind him.

The Story is centred around Patrick and the land he farms, a place where Mesolithic tombs, famine villages and present day small rocky fields are like jewels telling of our long human story on these hills.

Patrick longs to farm in the quite pace his ascendants did. But his life gains a different momentum when he’s called to Battle in the Supreme courts to decide on the fate of this iconic wilderness.

Native – Short Film with The Silver Branch

An emigrant returns to his native land after many years abroad in search of the family and home he had left in his youth. The film stars Patrick Bergin (Sleeping with the Enemy).

Click HERE for tickets for The Silver Branch and Native.

Butterfly City – Feature Film

Butterfly City

Director Olga Černovaitė and Irish producer Jeremiah Cullinane collaborated to produce this feature documentary on the Lithuanian city of Visaginas. In the 1970’s, the city was created to service a powerful Soviet nuclear power station, designed and shaped like the wings of a butterfly. It was intended to be a window of Soviet progress to the West. After USSR disintegration, EU membership meant Lithuania had to close the plant, the city’s main industry. 25,000 Russian-speaking townspeople were left with an uncertain future.

Click HERE for tickets.

The Camino Voyage

The Camino Voyage
The Camino Voyage

Opening this year’s festival is Dónal Ó Céilleachair’s documentary: an epic 2,500 km modern day celtic odyssey, The Camino Voyage/Iomramh an Chamino. For hundreds of years people sailed from Ireland to A Coruña in Northern Spain and walked the camino to Santiago de Compostela from there. This inspiring crew have done their own version of this historical voyage in a Naomhóg. The film features Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich, Glen Hansard, Liam Holden, Brendan-Pháid Ó Muircheartaigh and Writer and Poet; Domhnall Mac Síthigh (1951-2017).

Tickets are sold out.

You can also catch Dónal Ó Céilleachair at their Dingle Pow-Wow event on Saturday 24th March in The Blasket Centre.

The Keepers of the Flame – World Premiere  

Keepers of the Flame

Emmy-award winner Nuala O’Connor’s directorial debut will close this year’s festival. The Keepers of the Flame tells the universal story of generations dealing with the consequences of war and civil war; of what is remembered and what is forgotten.

The Keepers of the Flame delves into the archives of the Irish Military Service Pensions and what emerges is a truly personal retelling of a brutal and divisive period in the birth of a nation and the devastating legacy it left in its wake, for the individuals who took part and their families who suffered long after the fighting ended. More than 85,000 applied for the Irish Military Service Pension. Just over 18,000 received any payment. The film brings to light the diverse experiences of some of the 85,000 ordinary Irish men and women who made pension or dependents allowance claims for having actively served during the violent revolutionary period from Easter 1916 to the end of the Civil War in 1921. Their stories lie in the Irish Military Pension Archives, stack upon stack of applications detailing involvement and actions, thousands of different interpretations of the same events lying side by side.

Click HERE for tickets.

Director, Nuala O’Connor, Executive Producer, Philip King and writer Diarmaid Ferriter will participate in this year’s Dingle Pow-Wow.

The Breadwinner 

The Breadwinner
The Breadwinner

Nora Twomey’s Oscar-nominated The Breadwinner will showcase as part of Animation Dingle.  Parvana is an 11-year-old girl growing up under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. When her father is wrongfully arrested, Parvana disguises herself as a boy in order to support her family. With dauntless perseverance, Parvana draws strength from the stories her father told her, and ultimately risks her life to discover if he is still alive. Equal parts thrilling and enchanting, The Breadwinner is a timely and inspiring tale about the transcendent power of stories, and their potential to unite and heal us all.

Followed with a Q&A with the director, Nora Twomey.

Festival Programme is now live to book your tickets. 

Dingle International Film Festival is couched within the breath-taking town of Dingle on the beautiful Dingle Peninsula, part of The Wild Atlantic Way. The festival takes places annually in March. Dingle is home to many filmmakers, one of Ireland’s only independent cinemas, is a known film location (Ryan’s Daughter, Far and Away and Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and a major tourist destination making it the perfect home for the festival. Dingle IFF actively promotes and platforms Irish film, Irish filmmakers and Irish animation, whilst also playing host to major industry players both from Ireland and abroad. Dingle IFF is an established date on the film festival circuit and is now actively promoting Irish film and animation products in the world market.

For more information on the festival, please go to our website.