107 feature films feature at this year’s Galway Film Fleadh, including 21 films from around the world making their World Premiere at Galway this year.
The Film Fleadh’s line-up of new Irish cinema includes Viko Nicki’s Cellar Door, starring Karen Hassan, Catherine Walker and Mark O’Halloran in a Magdalene laundry inspired mystery-drama. Actor Hugh O’Conor’s feature directorial debut Metal Heart stars Jordanne Jones (pictured) as a self-conscious young woman stuck at home with her estranged sister, whose sibling rivalry threatens to boil over when Moe Dunford, playing the role of the mysterious older man, moves in next door. Dunford also stars in Northern Irish thriller The Dig, in which he plays a man who has served fifteen years for murder and returns home to find the victim’s grieving father still searching his land for the missing body. Martin Beirne debuts with his rural coming-of-age tale Around Here, produced entirely independently in the director’s native Roscommon. Melissa George will present the World Premiere of David Gleeson’s new film Don’t Go, in which she plays a woman escaping her grief with her husband in the West of Ireland. And the titular Irish Olympian and champion professional boxer Katie Taylor will present Ross Whitaker’s documentary Katie, which charts her comeback from her 2016 loss in Rio to conquering the world of professional women’s boxing.
This year’s closing film is Black 47, the Famine set thriller.
Documentaries include I, Dolours, the biopic of IRA activist Dolours Price, based on the infamous Boston Tapes interviews, which she recorded on the condition they only be released after her death; Lomax in Éirinn, a musical journey presented by Clannad’s Pól Brennan, exploring how American song collector Alan Lomax came to Ireland on a mission to save folk music; and A Mother Brings Her Son to be Shot, debut director Sinéad O’Shea’s fly-on-the-wall documentary about a family living in post-conflict Northern Ireland.
The Film Fleadh also screens a number of Irish shorts, including a daily retrospective of short films from the festival’s past 30 years of award winners. The retrospective includes early works from directors Lenny Abrahamson , Nora Twomey and many more.
The full festival programme is available here
30th Galway Film Fleadh | Tuesday 10th – Sunday 15th, July 2018.
