Rome’s Irish Film Festa 2016 presents a large selection of Irish films screened in Italy for the first time, and also features daily interactions with directors and actors. The festival runs from April 7th to 10th.
The competition section, founded in 2010 and reserved for short films, includes 15 works, ten live action and five animated.
Among the feature films, nearly all of which are Italian premieres, is the winner of Best First Feature at last year’s Galway Film Fleadh You’re Ugly Too by director Mark Noonan, The Survivalist by Stephen Fingleton with Martin McCann, Mia Goth and Olwen Fouéré, I Used to Live Here from director Frank Berry, An Klondike the first western to be completely filmed in Ireland and set mainly in the Irish language, Pursuit, by playwright and theatre director Paul Mercier,andthe documentary film Road, which is narrated by Liam Neeson.
This year, the festival devotes a special section to the Centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising with the Italian premiere of 1916 The Irish Rebellion, a documentary film narrated by the acclaimed Irish actor Liam Neeson.
The programme also includes a selection of episodes from 1916 Seachtar na Casca (The Easter Seven), a historical-documentary television series directed by An Klondike‘s Dathaí Keane, scripted by Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh, and produced by Abú Media Films for Irish-language television channel TG4.
In addition the festival features nine short films made as part of After ’16, the funding programme established by the Irish Film Board as part of the commemoration initiatives and artistic production linked to the 1916 centenary.
In the section dedicated to the anniversary of the Easter Rising is an Irish Classic specially selected for 2016: Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins.
The Casa del Cinema will also house an exhibition, 1916: Portraits and Lives, a selection of 42 portraits of men and women from the Easter Rising, created by illustrator David Rooney for the eponymous book published by the Royal Irish Academy.
Finally, the festival will screen his Lenny Abrahamson’s Oscar-nominated film, Room.
