Following on from its Screen Director’s Guild Finders Series Award, Irish director Terry McMahon’s acclaimed new feature Patrick’s Day has been selected to screen at the prestigious Mill Valley Film Festival in California.
MVFF is an annual, non-competitive film festival presented by the California Film Institute, which has established an impressive track record for launching new films and the careers of new filmmakers and is well known for the quality of its programming.
Last year the festival featured eventual Academy Awards winners 12 Years a Slave and Dallas Buyers Club, as well as the Irish centred Best Picture nominee Philomena, which picked up an Audience Favourite award.
Patrick’s Day, which recently won Best Irish Feature at the Galway Film Fleadh (sharing with Gerard Barrett’s Glassland), follows a young man with mental health issues who becomes intimate with a suicidal air hostess , only for his obsessive mother to enlist a dysfunctional cop to separate them.
The film stars New Zealander Kerry Fox (Shallow Grave, Sex & Violence, An Angel at My Table), Waterford actor Moe Dunford (Vikings, Raw, The Tudors) in his first major film role, Catherine Walker (Dark Touch, Leap Year, Critical), and veteran English actor Philip Jackson (My Week with Marilyn, Little Voice, Poirot).
Patrick’s Day does not currently have an Irish cinematic release date, but expect it to be out later this year.