The 58th Cork Film Festival promises to be a good one

This year’s Cork Film Festival takes place in the southern city from November 9th to 17th and features an extraordinarily good line-up of films. The opener is Alexander Payne’s award-outed Nebraska, featuring Bruce Dern, with the closer being the equally lauded Kill Your Darlings,  featuring Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg.

As if those two weren’t enough the festival is littered with Irish premières that include Ridley Scott’s The Counsellor,  Palme D’Or winner Blue is the Warmest Colour, and Robert Redford in All is Lost.

Irish films feature heavily too, with thriller Dark Touch directed by Marina de Van, The Sea, directed by Stephen Brown and How to Be Happy, from acclaimed writer Conor Horgan, all showing.

Full press release:

The 58th Cork Film Festival, Ireland’s oldest film festival will take place from November 9th-17th and will screen big budget films, world cinema, independent films, international documentaries and short films from Ireland and all over the world.

The festival opens on Saturday November 9th with the screening of Nebraska, which is Alexander Payne’s (Sideways, About Schmidt, The Descendants) latest film and tells the story of a road trip between a father and a son where bittersweet personal truths are uncovered and savoured. The film stars lonely salesman David Grant (Will Forte) and his father Woody (Bruce Dern in a Cannes Palme d’Or Best Actor Winning Performance)

The Closing Night Presentation of the Cork Film Festival is Kill Your Darlings, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and stars Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter, Woman in Black) in a breakthrough career defining performance as Allen Ginsberg. Set in the 1940’s. Kill Your Darlings is a crime thriller based on the previously untold true story of a murder that implicated the men who went onto to become the great poets of the Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.

“I am delighted to be launching the 58th Cork Film Festival today”, said James Mullighan, newly appointed Creative Director. “It has been a joy collaborating with my talented programming team, bringing together this rich and varied selection of the best of contemporary cinema. Congratulations to all those who have short films in competition this year. I look forward to meeting Cork’s film fans this November”.

This year, Cork Film Festival presents a series of films with a revolutionary spirit, looking at the brave individuals who fight injustice. 99% – The Occupy Wall Street Film documents America’s Occupy movement which lead the world in mass protest against the ruling elite, whose prime objective is profit over people. Forbidden Voices, tells the story of three women who have defied government censorship by blogging about their closed countries of Cuba, China and Iran, risking their lives in the process while Silence is Gold, looks at the corruption of Canada’s mining companies in Africa and the man who outed them.

The Festival will also present the full amazing cinematic television series Burning Bush, directed by the legenday Agnieszka Holland which follows the fight for freedom in communist Czechoslovakia after the death of Jan Palach, the young student who set fire to himself in Prague in January 1969.

Exciting international features include The Counsellor directed by Ridley Scott and stars Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz. The film is about a lawyer who finds himself in over his head when he gets involved in drug trafficking. Blue is the Warmest Colour, Winner of the Palme d’Or this year is an unhibitied exploration of the turbulent nature of love while All is Lost starring Robert Redford, who finds himself staring mortality in the face after a collision with a shipping container in the Indian Sea. Irish Feature Films include the thriller Dark Touch directed by Marina de Van, The Sea, directed by Stephen Brown and based on the John Banville’s Man Booker Prize Winning Novel and How to Be Happy, a comedy about a marriage councellor who become involved with his clients in a misguided pursuit of happiness.

Stong documetaries are to the fore at this year’s Cork Film Festival. The documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology directed by Sophie Fiennes is the ultimate guide to psychoanalysis and fiction film, Leviathan wonderfully capatures the mayhem of life and labour on a large fishing vessel while Assimilation: An Dubh ina Gheal ‘an Irish language documentary examining Louis de Paor’s poetry about the Irish emigrant’s experience in Australia.

Music lovers will enjoy the mini strand of Punk documentaries with the amazing Punk Singer and Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker and Lukas Moodysson’s glorious slice of punk coming of age We are the Best!.

The Festival welcomes the Event Series Riching Pickings to Cork to explore through debate and film challenging and topical themes including the pathologising of mental illness (Battle for the Brain) and how our corporal selves define and drives us (Rewiring the Body)
There will be a special shorts festival within the festival showcasing the best in Cork, Irish and World Shorts. Director Tony Palmer will attend the screening of his legendary seven hour, forty-five minute film Wagner in the Cork Opera House, which will be, screened in full with two meal breaks. Triskel Christchurch will host a Giallo Night featuring a live rescore of Amer by Serafina Steer while a series of films curated by the artist Anthony Haughey to commemorate the centenary of the 1913 Dublin Lock-Out will screen in the National Sculpture Factory.

The Cork Film Festival will pay tribute to Nicolas Roeg and screen a selection of his films. There will be a special Mexican Programme including Heli, whose director won Best Director Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Comedian Dylan Moran will discuss his favourite movies while the Festival will celebrate the work of documentary maker James Broughton who paved the way for the Beat Generation.

For the full programme of screenings and tickets see www.corkfilmfest.org.

The Cork Film Festival acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council.