Donegal’s Antoin Beag Ó Colla has won the Físín short film competition award which took place at the recent Dingle International Film Festival. The prize includes a €5000 fund towards the production of a short film plus €2000 worth of equipment hire from Vast Valley.
This year’s five finalists were Gillian Grattan, Elaine Kennedy, Dáithí Ó Cinnéide, Antoin Beag Ó Colla and Sinéad Ralston. Físín is aimed at encouraging filmmaking in the Irish language, with five projects selected and invited to pitch their stories to the festival’s panel. The whole process is conducted using the Irish language.
Ó Colla is currently Researcher and Writing Assistant on TV3’s IFTA-winning Red Rock series. He has also had previous success with Rúbaí, a multi-award winning short film he wrote which was directed by Louise Ní Fhiannachta. Ó Colla also has been working with James Ryan on other projects and together they’ve secured development funding for a TG4 comedy drama series.
County Galway-based James Ryan, who has previous credits as Production Manager on TG4’s IFTA-winning Fleadh TV as well as Co-Producer on Abu Media’s Garraí Glas will produce the film. The film, which has the working title of An Mallacht, is a dark comedy drama based on the Mayo GAA team curse of 1951.
Casting and a production schedule will be decided upon in the coming weeks with the film to be screened at next year’s Dingle International Film Festival.
