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Some great films you may miss at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival but can catch at the IFI over the coming months…

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO March 12th

LOURDES April 2nd

SAMSON & DELILAH April 2nd

I AM LOVE (IO SONO L’AMORE) April 9th

THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL May 7th

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Tues 23 Feb / Screen 1 / 8.00pm

Director: Xiaolu Guo 2009 / UK/Germany/France / 98 minutes

Principal Cast: Lu Huang, Wei Yi Bo, Geoffrey Hutchings Director Xiaolu Guo will be in attendance at this screening

She is Mei, an enigmatic young Chinese woman longing for a different life. To find herself, she needs to escape, and her journey takes her first to a city in her own country, where she finds love, and loses it. Still searching, she travels to England, drifting and rootless. All the time, she is learning more about herself, experimenting. Sometimes the experiments are misguided. But none of them are wasted. There is no end point to her journey, but we sense that what she leaves behind is as important as what she is moving towards.

Filmmaker and novelist Xiaolu Guo has herself followed a trajectory from China to the UK. Here she brings an impressive and attractive energy and freshness to her cross-cultural story, both in the style and structure of the piece and in her choice of PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish to supply the score.

Sandra Hebron, London Film Festival Programme

Tues 23 Feb / Light House / 8.15pm

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

2008 / Russia / 102 minutes

Principal Cast: Leonid Bichevin, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Andrey Panin, Svetlana Pismichenko

Sick-bags at the ready for Aleksey Balabanov’s (Cargo 200, Of Freaks and Men) deliciously funny and graphically gory take on Mikhail Bulgakov’s Notes Of A Young Doctor, as he juxtaposes the worsening morphine addiction of a bookish young medic (Leonid Bichevin) in his backwoods hospital with the 1917 Bolshevik revolution which rages in the neighbouring cities. Divided into short episodes, all with laughout-loud titles (The First Injection, The First Amputation, etc.) which comically hint at the ensuing carnage, the film offers a vision of humanity bent on self-destruction and where the social pillars of religion, politics, media and medicine are all irredeemably corrupt. The exhaustive production design deserves a special mention.

Time Out

‘Handsomely shot and set to an evocative score, Balabanov transforms Mikhail’s self-inflicted hell into a searing spectacle that viewers simply can’t tear their eyes from.’

Vancouver International Film Festival Programme

Tues 23 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 8.30pm

Directors: Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell 2009 / Ireland / 87 minutes

Directors Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell will be in attendance at this screening.

Beautifully photographed by Ross McDonnell and skilfully edited by Carter Gunn, Colony follows several American beekeepers during 2008 and 2009 as the country’s economy spiralled downward.

A recent and unexplainable phenomenon, colony collapse disorder saw a drop in almost a quarter of the number of bees in the United States. This mystery is akin to something out of science fiction and has dark implications for the future. Because our agriculture depends on pollination, when bees are in trouble, so is society.

At the heart of this film is the Seppi family, newcomers to the beekeeping world. As the Seppis face the collapse of their colony and the economy, tensions course through the family. McDonnell and Gunn perfectly capture the intimacy of these scenes, and are as adept at filming the microcosmic scale of the beehives, making us fear for the bee’s survival as for our own.

Thom Powers, Toronto International Film Festival Programme

The death of their teenage son, Bennett, in a car crash is almost too much for the Brewer family to bear, not just because his was a life of such promise but also because the impact of his death unleashes the turmoil that was just beneath the surface of their lives. His mother (Sarandon) becomes obsessed and can’t let go; his father (Brosnan) can’t face it at all; and when Bennett’s girlfriend (Mulligan) appears, the family must come to grips with circumstances that complicate their loss even further.

Crying your eyes out at the movies used to be commonplace. But the difficulty of affecting a contemporary audience emotionally demonstrates how much respect a work like The Greatest engenders: it is an enormously moving, intelligent exploration of pain and grieving, a film that will touch you and stay with you.

Sundance Film Festival Programme

Tues 23 Feb / Cineworld 17 / 9.00pm

Director: Shana Feste

2009/ USA / 98 minutes

Principal Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon, Carey Mulligan, Aaron Johnson

Wed 24 Feb / Screen 1 / 2.00pm

Director: Patricia Rozema

1987 / Canada / 81 minutes

Principal Cast: Sheila McCarthy, Paule Baillargeon, Ann-Marie McDonald, Richard Monette

“Not only is this the best movie to date from the Canadian film industry – it stands among the very best movies from any country this year.” – This statement by Michael Dwyer dates back to 1987, and over twenty years later, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing remains an absolute delight.

Sheila McCarthy plays Polly, a dreamy, scatterbrained secretary and would-be artist taken on as assistant to the curator of a Toronto art gallery, Gabrielle (Baillargeon). Enter Gabrielle’s estranged, much-younger lover, Mary (McDonald) – setting in motion a chain of events that will cause Polly no end of heartache.

Patricia Rozema’s witty comedy is a fitting tribute to the DIFF founder’s love of cinema: a movie to be discovered, embraced and shared with friends. See it, if for no other reason than it will make you smile. And smile often.

Rory Bonass, JDIFF

Wed 24 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 4.00pm

Director: Henrik Ruben Genz 2008 / Denmark / 95 minutes

Principal Cast: Jakob Cedergren, Lene Maria Christensen, Kim Bodnia, Lars Brygmann

Tightly scripted, carefully composed, shrewdly acted and perceptively scored, this dark, ominously macabre comedy weaves an intriguingly odd and sinister tale of compromise and corruption within the small provincial town of Skarrild, South Jutland. Reassigned to this remote town in the wake of a mysterious incident, police officer Robert (Cedergren) is determined to quickly earn his way back to Copenhagen. Unfortunately, country life is not as simple as he first thought: subjugated by the community’s small town eccentricity and fierce wariness of newcomers, his good intentions are soon tested by some very strange goings on and an inscrutable damsel in distress.

Genz refuses to allow Terribly Happy to submit to any classic thematic or filmic codes. Through his inventive and disconcertingly composed style of storytelling – at times echoing the Coen Brothers – he has achieved an exceptionally surreal world that oozes with suspense.

Edinburgh Film Festival Programme

Wed 24 Feb / Screen 1 / 4.30pm

Director: Manoel de Oliveira 2009 / Portugal/France / 64 minutes

For his 100th birthday, director Manoel de Oliveira decided to give us a present with this marvellous adaptation of a novel by his Portuguese countryman Eça de Queiroz, a wry, moving tale of a pure, if frustrated, love. A young, Lisbon accountant, Macario, tells the story of the greatest but most tragic love of his life: A young woman he would often see sitting by a window fanning herself. Soon the two are soon engaged, yet the match is opposed by his uncle and the wedding called off. Years later, Macario returns again intent on marriage — but will fate this time deal him a kinder hand? Using his trademark, highly theatricalised style, Oliveira brilliantly juxtaposes the rigor of Queiroz’s prose with seething passions lurking beneath his story. “Romance,” according to Macario, “begins in art and reality.” Here Oliveira chronicles how memories become fiction and occasionally, art.

Wed 24 Feb / Screen 1 / 6.00pm

Director: Asghar Farhadi / 2009/ Iran / 119 minutes

Principal Cast: Golshifteh Farahani, Taraneh Alidousti, Mani Haghighi

About Elly is a tense ensemble drama that unmasks male-female relationships in middle class Iran: Sepideh (Farahani) plans a weekend getaway to the Caspian Sea with some friends, and invites her son’s kindergarten teacher, Elly (Alidousti), to finally introduce her to the newly single Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini). Her well-intentioned game of cupid turns foul, however, when the trip is struck by sudden tragedy and Elly disappears. Fear and guilt riddle the group as they try to find Elly but Sepideh’s secret soon triggers a web of lies where saving face becomes more important than revealing the truth.

Writer-Director Asghar Farhadi (Beautiful City, Fireworks Wednesday) skillfully sculpts a well-acted and powerful drama while maintaining the pace of a suspenseful mystery. A sophisticated and effective work of Iranian Cinema, Farhadi continues to illuminate the complexities and contradictions of Iranian life.

Genna Terranova, Tribeca Film Festival Programme

Wed 24 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 6.00pm

Director: Pil-Sung Yim

2007 / South Korea / 117 minutes

Principal Cast: Chun Jeong myoung, Eun Won-jae, Jin Ji-hee.

Screening with the short film, Through the Night. See page 21.

This Freudian fairy tale from South Korea reworks the Grimm brothers’ story for adults. An anxious businessman driving through the countryside to visit his dying mother hears on his mobile phone that his lover is pregnant. He skids off the road and is escorted by a child through a dark forest to a magical house, seemingly arrested in a preadolescent state of desire and dependence. Adults appear to threaten children. It is apparent, however, that the three children who dominate the place are destroying a succession of surrogate parents. In this dense, frightening, superbly designed film, rites of passage are disguised as nightmares. It is terrain illuminatingly explored by Bruno Bettelheim and Marina Warner, with whose writings the director is almost certainly acquainted.

Phillip French, The Observer

Wed 24 Feb / Cineworld 17 / 6.30pm

Director: Nicholas Winding Refn

2009 / Denmark / 100 minutes

Principal Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Gary Lewis, Jamie

One-Eye (Mikkelsen), a mute warrior of formidable strength, has been held prisoner by the chieftain Barde for years. A spectacularly brutal and efficient killer, One-Eye is dispatched by Barde to fight for money and land in increasingly ferocious hand-to-hand conflicts. Shown kindness only by Are (Maarten Stevenson), the young boy who tends him, One-Eye escapes, taking Are with him. On their flight, One-Eye and Are meet a group of Viking Christians on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Joining together, each embarks on a journey into their own personal heart of darkness.

This journey itself is highly metaphorical: whether traveling toward a new Jerusalem, the New World or into the arms of Valhalla itself, Winding Refn (Bronson) creates an outstanding sense of time, place and emotion. Valhalla Rising has echoes of the doomed voyages of Aguirre, Wrath of God or Apocalypse Now but, as we have come to expect with Winding Refn’s work, this is a true original.

Sarah Lutton, London Film Festival Programme

Wed 24 Feb / IFI 1 / 6.30pm

Director: Sé Merry Doyle

2010 / Ireland / 90 minutes

Director Sé Merry Doyle and Jimmy Murakami will be in attendance at this screening

The world reknowned animator Jimmy Murakami (When the Wind Blows, The Snowman) was 8 years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour during World War Two. Like many other Japanese-American citizens, the Murakami family was evacuated to a concentration camp called Tule Lake in the California desert. Considered a threat to national security, Jimmy’s family, along with many thousands of other internees, spent four years in the camp where they suffered all kinds of deprivations and where his young sister Sumiko died of leukemia. Jimmy, now in early retirement, decided to return this period of his life by creating a series of stunning paintings that illuminate his memories of prison life, he also finally, he chose to return to Tule Lake Camp. Made under the Arts Council’s Reel Art Initiative, Sé Merry Doyle’s wonderful new film follows this extraordinary journey with great compassion and grace.

Gráinne Humphreys, JDIFF

Wed 24 Feb / Light House / 6.30pm

Director: Valeriy Todorovskiy 2008 / Russia / 125 minutes

Principal Cast: Oksana Akinshina, Anton Shagin, Evgeniya Khirivskaya, Maksim Matveev, Igor Voynarovskiy Director Valeriy Todorovskiy will be in attendance at this screening.

Director Valeriy Todorovsky explores the politics of music, as he hones in on the conflict between the garishly dressed and sexually liberated hipster movement of 50s Russia and their arch-foes – the Komsomol, the youth wing of the Communist Party. In a familiar musical set-up, Communist youth Mels (Anton Shagin) falls head over hells for Polly (Oksana Akinshina), a hipster girl who shows him the wonders of American jazz… and hairspray. Music and their common dream of America becomes a manifestation of freedom. But is the America they dream about real, or just an elaborate fantasy?

With a score consisting of jazzed-up versions of classic Russian hit songs, and headed by a young and energetic cast, Hipsters celebrates the rich and colorful legacy of Russia’s musical tradition. The film won four Nika Awards (the Russian Oscars) including Best Film.

Stockholm Film Festival Programme

This screening is supported by The Smithwicks Cat Laughs.

Wed 24 Feb / Screen 1 / 8.30pm

Director: Satoko Yokohama

2009 / Japan / 120 minutes

Principal Cast: Kenichi Matsuyama, Kumiko Aso, Arata, Nozoe Seiji Screening with the short film, The Trembling Veil of Bones. See page 21.

The darling of new Japanese cinema, Satoko Yokohama confirms her talent and brilliant originality with Bare Essence of Life, a satisfying tale of rural eccentricity that combines black humour and fantasy with romanticism and drama. The film chronicles mentally challenged young farmer Yojin (Matsuyama) as he daily tends his grandmother’s organic vegetable garden. Life is peaceful until the day Machiko (Aso) appears in the countryside. A pretty nursery-school teacher who loves children, Machiko has come to escape her past: her boyfriend died in a car crash while he was with another lover. Something Yojin has never experienced before creeps into his heart; a feeling that brings unexpected consequences. Filmed with true empathy, Bare Essence of Life renders a vivid portrait of rural Japan. As the story unfolds its miracles and surprises, the audience follows the ups and downs of Yokohama’s characters.

Giovanna Fulvi, Toronto International Film Festival Programme

Whip It! is Drew Barrymore’s debut as a director and Ellen Page’s first big starring role since Juno. The setting is the world of roller derby, that discredited seventies sexploitation sport now transformed into a grassroots phenomenon sweeping a certain sector of America’s female population. Bliss Cavendar (Page) is your typical small-town Texan teenager: comically misunderstood by her parents, made to compete in beauty pageants by her faded debutante mom (Harden). While visiting nearby Austin, Bliss spies a couple of wildlooking women on roller skates delivering flyers for a local roller-derby night. Before long, she’s leading an exhilarating but risky double life. Director Barrymore is clearly in her groove working with the perfectly cast derby girls (including Juliette Lewis as Iron Maven and Zoe Bell as Bloody Holly), all of whom execute their own stunts. Barrymore herself is a knockout (literally) as accident-prone Smashle Simpson.

Noah Cowen, Toronto International Film Festival Programme

Wed 24 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 9.00pm

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos 2009 / Greece / 96 minutes

Principal Cast: Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni

Wed 24 Feb / Cineworld 17 / 8.40pm

Director: Drew Barrymore 2009 / US / 111 minutes

Featured Cast: Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kirsten Wiig, Juliette Lewis, Daniel Stern

‘Three indefinitely grounded siblings are stuck in an alternative universe dictated by their parents’ cruel whimsies – think an eternal Big Brother house as designed by Lars von Trier.”

Boyd Van Hoeij, Variety

Winner of the Un Certain Regard Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Greek filmmaker Christos Stergioglou’s second feature is a revelation. A married couple and their three children live happily in a high standard villa surrounded by a palisade. Only the father can leave the house - the children are manipulated in an alternative reality that keeps them completely isolated from all contact with the outside. A cat is a bloodthirsty predator, Frank Sinatra is the family’s grandfather and sex is just another bodily function in the hilariously grotesque Dogtooth, a surprising tour de force where the fixed shot is an impassive executioner and the banality of its setting creates a mesmerizing and disturbing atmosphere.

Sitges Film Festival Programme

Thurs 25 Feb / Screen 1 / 2.00pm

Director: Stephen Frears

198 / UK / minutes

Principal Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis,Gordon Warnecke, Roshan Seth, Saeed Jaffrey

Two seminal works from 1985 were presented at the first Dublin Film Festival, major films that Michael Dwyer fought long and hard to acquire for his debut. Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s short The Woman Who Married Clark Gable was the perfect opening film and one of the heralders of a new dawn in Irish cinema. Its luminous cinematography, wonderful performances (Bob Hoskins and Brenda Fricker) and tender direction have seldom been bettered in the intervening 25 years. Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette was equally distinctive, a brash, funny and brilliantly directed film of love among the soaps suds in a run-down London City laundrette. It was made on 16mm for Channel 4 but following its extraordinary reception at Edinburgh (and soon after in Dublin) it was released into cinemas where it launched the careers of Frears, writer Hanif Kureishi and Daniel Day-Lewis, as well as fledgling producers Working Title Films.

Martin Mahon

Thurs 25 Feb / National Gallery / 6.00pm

Director: Alexander Sokurov 2002 / Russian / 96 minutes

Featured Cast: Sergei Dontsov, Mariya Kuznetsova, Leonid Mozgovoy, Mikhail Piotrovsky

As part of the 2010 focus on Russian Cinema season, the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival is delighted to present a opportunity to revisit a film shown in the very first film festival in 2002, but now but shown in a new setting for a single , very special screening. As successful as it is ambitious, Russian Ark condenses three centuries of Russian history into a single uninterrupted 87 minute take. A visually hypnotizing cinematic feat, Alexsandr Sokurov’s film is a spellbinding ode to St. Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum. Shot in one fluid take using High Definition video cameras, the photography floats and careens through the lavish corridors of the museum, examining its architectural details while following a dreamlike plot.

‘ A dazzling dance to the music of time’

Jay Hoberman, Village Voice

Thurs 25 Feb / Screen 1 / 4.00pm

Director:

1925, in Dobroujda, an area of Romania on the Bulgarian border, populated by a variety of nationalities: to an isolated army garrison come Captain Dumitriu (Bleont) and his wife Marie-Therese (Scott Thomas). To avenge the massacre of frontier guards by Macedonian bandits, Bleont takes Bulgarian villagers hostage; but when he’s ordered to shoot them, encouraged by his wife’s humane sympathy for their captives, he refuses. Firmly rooted in history, this is far more than just another costume drama; the insane savagery of the conflict depicted inevitably recalls more recent Balkan hostilities and ‘ethnic cleansing’. It’s a tough, unsentimental film, fuelled by a hatred of nationalistic delirium and tribal aggression, its anguish wonderfully incarnated by Scott Thomas’s characteristically fine performance.

Time Out

Thurs 25 Feb / Light House / 6.15pm

Director: Andrey Khrzhanoysky

2008 / Russia / 130 minutes

Principal Cast: Alisa Frejndlich, Sergei Yursky, Grigoriy Dityatkovskiy, Artyom Smola

Director Andrey Khrzhanovskiy will be in attendance at this screening.

Former animator Andrey Khrzhanovsky combines scripted scenes, archival footage, animation, and surrealist flights of fancy to create this stirring portrait of Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky and the postwar Soviet cultural scene. Exiled from his native Russia in 1972, Brodsky once claimed that if he were ever to return to the Motherland, he would do so anonymously. Stepping off from that premise, Khrzhanovsky has created an ironic fairy tale. The journey covers not only geography but time as well, as the audience is transported back to the Russia of the Fifties and Sixties to the artistic explosion that erupted in the wake of de-Stalinization and the Thaw. Room and a Half is both a moving tribute to one of the 20th century’s major poets, as well as a fascinating look at cultural life under the watchful eyes of an authoritarian regime.

New York Film Festival Programme

This screening is supported by Langtons Hotel in Kilkenny.

Award-winning short filmmaker Mira Fornay’s first feature, an Irish/ Czech/Slovakian co-production, is a riveting character-driven drama with powerful central performances from Réka Derzsi and Rita Banczi.

Alzbeta (Derzsi) is desperate to find a man and create a new home for herself in Ireland – her family home back in Slovakia is being torn down to make way for a motorway. Her older sister Tina (Banczi) is engaged to an Irishman (Monaghan) and wants to help her out, but Alzbeta categorically refuses her assistance. There remains something unsaid between the two sisters – something they will both have to deal with if they are ever to pull themselves out of their respective downward spirals.

Foxes tells the story about envy, jealousy, and dependency between two sisters, but mainly about their love for one another. It is a simple story about betrayal, redemption and forgiveness. It’s a sister’s love–story.

Rory

Bonass, JDIFF

The eerie woods and fantastic rock formations of the Brittany Coast form a primordial mindscape in tyro Austrian scribe-helmer Wolfgang Fischer’s impressive psychological thriller. Anton (Trepte) has stayed at boarding school since his father’s death, and a vacation is meant to bring him closer to his mother (Beglau), and her boyfriend. But kith and kin cannot hold a candle to the fascination exerted by bad boy David (Lau) and his sister, Katja (Dwyer), amoral free spirits who represent everything Anton is not. The three soon become inseparable. Fischer never deals in gimmicky reversals or surprise revelations, relying more on dream logic and spellbinding locations to escalate the atmosphere of dread. Audiences may figure out the secret behind the ambiguity of the couple, but any “aha!” oversimplification pales before the mesmerizing sweep of the landscapes and the relentless certainty of the camera.

Thurs 25 Feb / Screen 1 / 6.30pm

Director: Mira Fornay

2009 / Ireland/Czech

Republic/Slovakia / 90 minutes

Principal Cast: Réka Derzsi, Rita Banczi, Aaron Monaghan, Jonathan Byrne Director Mira Fornay will be in attendance at this screening.

World Premiere

Thurs 25 Feb / IFI 1 / 6.30pm

Director: Ivan Kavanagh 2010 / Ireland / 71 minutes

Principal Cast: Valene Kane, Patrick O’Donnell, Bibi Larsson, Emma Eliza Regan Director Ivan Kavanagh will be in attendance at this screening.

With his previous feature, Our Wonderful Home (shown in JDIFF 2009), Ivan Kavanagh proved to be an acute observer of the fissures and fractures of the modern Irish family. He returns to the subject with his remarkable new film.

Alongside her sister Cathy (Regan), Yvonne (Kane) returns home to Dublin to watch over her dying mother (Larsson), a widow who cares for their disabled brother, Peter (O’Donnell). As the days pass, both sisters struggle with their own fears and doubts, their mother’s imminent death forcing them to address their complex relationship. A family united will be torn apart, as the siblings must decide: who will care for Peter when their mother dies?

Shot with simplicity and featuring impressive performances from its young Irish cast, a highly emotive subject is tackled with great skill and control by talented young filmmaker Kavanagh.

Rory Bonass, JDIFF

Ronnie Scheib, Variety

Thurs 25 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 6.30pm

Director: Wolfgang Fischer 2009 / Germany / 89 minutes

Principal Cast: Ludwig Trepte, Frederick Lau, Alice Dwyer, Bibiana Beglau

Director Wolfgang Fischer will be in attendance at this screening.

Concocted by the warped minds that were behind the creation of Bad Santa and centered around an eccentrically wonderful performance by Jim Carrey, I Love You relates a true story that is truly stranger than fiction, and a love story that will not be denied.

When Texas policeman, Steve Russell (Carrey), turns to fraud to allow him to change his lifestyle (in more ways than one), his subsequent stay in the state penitentiary results in his meeting the love of his life, fellow inmate Phillip Morris (McGregor). What ensues can only be described as a relentless quest, as Russell attempts escape after escape and executes con after con, all in the name of love.

Thurs 25 Feb / Cineworld 17 / 6.30pm

Directors: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa 2009/ USA / 102 minutes

Principal Cast: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro

A primer on the irresistible power of a man who is either insane or in love – is there a difference? – I Love You, Phillip Morris surely serves to remind us of the resilience of the human spirit.

Sundance Film Festival Programme

Mia Hansen-Løve made an impressive debut with her 2007 feature Everything Is Forgiven. Her follow-up is a striking leap forward – confident, sophisticated and emotionally insightful. The film is inspired by the life and tragic death of revered French producer Humbert Balsan: the Balsan figure here is Grégoire (de Lencquesaing), whose chaotic wheeler-dealer lifestyle masks a profound devotion to the cause of uncompromising art cinema. The film’s first half shows the chain-smoking Grégoire tirelessly troubleshooting projects for his beleaguered company, including a collaboration with a high-maintenance Swedish auteur. But when Grégoire’s reserves, financial and emotional, reach a dramatic cracking point, his wife Sylvia (Caselli) and three daughters are forced to cope with the outcome. This is, quite simply, one of cinema’s finest tributes to its own virtues and vicissitudes –and also, without a doubt, one of the most moving.

Jonathan Romney, LOndon Film Festival Programme

Thurs 25 Feb / Screen 1 / 8.40pm

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve 2009 / France / 110 minutes

Principal Cast: Chiara Caselli, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Alice de Lencquesaing

Thurs 25 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 8.40pm

Director: Michel Franco 2009 / Mexico / 90 minutes

Principal Cast: Dario Yazbek Bernal, Marimar Vega, Chema Torre

Director Michel Franco will be in attendance at this screening.

Based on real events, Michel Franco’s debut is a shocking drama that takes place in Mexico City. Three months before her wedding, Ana (Vega) and her 16-year-old brother, Daniel (Bernal), are abducted at gunpoint. The kidnappers are part of an underground porn ring, and they force the siblings to have sex with each other for their cameras. When the two are finally released, they tell no one – not even their family – what happened. Tracing the lasting psychological damage of the traumatic event, Franco’s film takes us into some unexpected terrain.

Executed with sensitivity and restraint, Daniel and Ana never attempts to manipulate our emotions. Instead, deeply rooted in naturalism, he lets the drama of the situation speak for itself. With its intense focus on the two siblings - never letting the audience know more than the two lead characters - Franco has created a claustrophobic and deeply disturbing drama.

Ashley Smith, Stockholm Film Festival Programme

Thurs 25 Feb / Cineworld 17 / 8.40pm

Director: Martin Scorsese 2010 / US / 138 minutes

Principal Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson

While few would dispute that Martin Scorsese’s Best Director Oscar for 2006’s The Departed was primarily intended to address prior oversight on the Academy’s part, Scorsese remains one of few filmmakers of the Movie Brat generation still firing on all cylinders – and a new Scorsese picture remains a major event on any discerning moviegoer’s calender.

Set in the 1950s and adapted from a novel by Denis Lehane (Mystic River), Shutter Island stars Leonardo DiCaprio – his fourth collaboration with Scorsese – and Mark Ruffalo as a pair of U.S. Marshalls investigating a mysterious disappearance in a remote insane asylum on an island in Massachusetts. Nothing, it’s fair to say, is quite as it seems: to reveal anything more may impair your (considerable) viewing pleasure. Inspired by the thrillers of Sam Fuller and Fritz Lang, Shutter Island sees Scorsese in playful mode, meticulously crafting a heady slice of pulpy genre cinema.

Derek O’Connor, JDIFF

This adaptation of the controversial literary debut by the then 18-year-old Polish writer Dorota Masłowska tells the story of a tough nationalist, homophobe, racist and anti-semite called Silny (Szyc). His girlfriend Magda leaves him and he gets together with the satanist virgin Angela. Together, they hang out in the nihilistic environment of drug-dependent urban wretches, whom Silny regards with a wry commentary fed on black humour and paranoia.

Fri 26 Feb / Light House / 6.00pm

Director: Georges Franju 1960 / France / 88 minutes

Principal Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Ailda Valli, Edith Scob

A welcome 50th anniversary outing for one of the great European horror films: at once ghastly and lyrical, Georges Franju’s luminescent mad doctor saga has had an immeasurable influence on the last half century of shock cinema. Dr. Génessier (Brasseur) is a brilliant surgeon who lectures on the experimental process of live tissue transplants. With the help of his daughter Louise (Valli) he has been kidnapping young women and removing their faces to graft onto that of his other daughter, Christiane (Scob), who has been horribly disfigured in a car accident. While her father and sister commit atrocities in her name, Christiane glides through their palatial house like a ghost, hidden behind a plastic, expressionless mask. Visually haunting and deeply unsettling, Les Yeux sans Visage is the missing link between Jean Cocteau and John Carpenter, and a vivid reminder that horror and high art are not mutually exclusive.

Derek O’Connor, JDIFF

Fri 26 Feb / IFI 1 / 6.30pm

Director: Andrew Kötting 2009 / Switzerland / 96 minutes

Principal Cast: Aurélia Petit, Jean-Luc Bideau, Adélaïde Leroux, Jacob Auzanneau

Director Andrew Kötting will be in attendance at this screening.

Filmmaker, artist and wild man of British cinema Andrew Kötting reinvents himself – in French – as a Franco-Swiss filmmaker with this intimate and eccentric family story.

Fri 26 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 6.30pm

Director: Nicolo Donato Denmark / 2009 / 90 minutes

Principal Cast: Thure Lindhardt, David Dencik, Nicolas Bro, Morten Holst

Thurs 25 Feb / Light House / 8.45pm

Director: Xawery Zulavski

2009 / Poland / 108 minutes

Principal Cast: Borys Szyc, Roma Gąsiorowska, Maria Strzelecka, Sonia Bohosiewicz

Snow White and Russian Red is a poetic, direct and disturbing portrayal of love, hopelessness and political burnout in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. It’s just as frenzied and insane (in the positive sense) as the novel and even incorporates author Masłowska into the plot – playing herself. This praiseworthy attempt to adapt a challenging literary model for the screen unquestionably preserves the clarity and spirit of Masłowska’s original work.

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Programme

Alex (Auzanneau) and his older sister Freya (Leroux) are teenage scions of the dynasty of an émigré Russian patriarch (Bideau). When the pair are caught playing taboo games, Ivul père is furious, telling his son never to set foot on his land again –an order the boy follows literally, taking to the trees and living a life off ground.

Absolutely convincing as a French film in the ‘intimist’ vein, Ivul is at the same time 100% Kötting – mixing English ruralism and French family narrative with the kind of visual and sonic mixing familiar from the director’s Gallivant and This Filthy Earth Ivul sees Kötting developing a bold but tender new variant on his idiosyncratic outsider aesthetic.

Jonathan Romney, London Film Festival Programme

The love that dare not speak its name gets a new(ish) twist in this intense drama by young Danish director Nicolo Donato, charting the growing homosexual attraction between two Danish neo-Nazis. Former Danish servicemen Lars (Lindhardt) and Jimmy (Dencik) are thrown together while training in a neo-Nazi group. Moving from hostility through grudging admiration to friendship and finally passion, events take a darker turn when their illicit relationship is uncovered. The subtle, unforced style of Brotherhood makes it more than a dour high-concept rehash of a tried-and-tested formula. The sensitivity of the script and the bravura of Donato’s direction means that the Nazi theme never feels exploitative. The film has interesting, understated points to make about political and amorous violence and tenderness. It’s by making its protagonists live a contradiction that the film exposes the stupidity of ideas that take no account of human warmth or contact.

Lee Marshall, Screen International

Described as the ‘Indiana Jones Of The Moving Image’, we are delighted to welcome Serge Bromberg to Dublin to present his acclaimed stage show, Retour de Flamme (Saved From the Flames). Presenting an eclectic programme of silent films with live musical accompaniment, Retour de Flamme sees Bromberg showcasing some of his recent treasure-hunting finds. Among the celluloid wonders on tap at this particular edition: Artheme Swallows His Clarinet, a fragment of a 1912 slapstick short made by the Eclipse production company, a mere dozen of whose more than 2000 productions still survive; Le Papillon Fantastique, a hand-colored print of a previously unknown 1909 film by French cinema pioneer George Méliés; Gregor and His Gregorians (1929), the earliest known musical sound film made in France (discovered by Bromberg in the rubble of a demolished film lab), which offers an early glimpse of a then newly unemployed silent film pianist – Stephane Grappelli – trying his hand at the violin; and another musical short, Jazz Hot (1938), featuring a significantly more advanced Grappelli and the only known film footage of guitar great Django Reinhardt. Just seeing these films is a rare enough treat, but Bromberg is more than a mere presenter; he’s a vaudevillian showman in his own right, bounding enthusiastically about the stage, lighting a strip of nitrate film ablaze, and providing his own piano accompaniment. Expect surprises aplenty!

Scott Foundas

Retour de Flamme at JDIFF will include:

Artheme Avale Sa Clarinette

(Artheme Swallows His Clarinet)

France / 1912 / Comique

Production: Eclipse

Direction: Ernest Servaes

Actors: Ernest Servaes

Pour La Fete De Sa Mere

France / 1906 / Drama

Production: Pathe

Papillon Fantastique

(The Spider And The Butterfly)

France / 1909 / Scene A Trucs

Production: Star Film

Direction: Georges Méliés

Gregor Et Ses Gregoriens (Gregor And His Gregorians)

France / 1930 / Jazz

Direction: Roger Lion

Actors: Gregor Et Ses

Grégoriens, Stéphane Grappelli

Jazz Hot

England / 1939 / Jazz

With: Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Emmanuel Soudieux, Joseph Reinhardt, Pierre “Barro” Ferret

Gertie The Trained Dinosaur

USA / 1914 / Animation

Production: Vitagraph

Direction: Winsor McCay

Actors: Winsor McCay, Georges McManus

Italy’s wannabes, their upstarts, showmen and show women personify the greatest aspirations of ‘beauty’ in Berlusconi’s Italy today. After all, having a media mogul for president for so long can ever so subtly turn the public away from each other and from truth, towards a simpler version of existence where morality is only set by what you see in the mirror. Director Erik Gandini exploits his position as insider and ex-pat to make sharp incisions into the new consciousness of Italy under Berlusconi, pointing a lens at three compelling stories that centre on the country’s obsession with fame, a sardonic sexuality and greed.

Gandini’s work has borne the brunt of censorship recently after ruffling the creases in many a politician’s suit both inside and outside Italy – so you know it’s got to be good. This is Italy from above and below the belt – don’t miss.

Sheffield Documentary Festival Programme

‘Italy has found its Michael Moore in Erik Gandini…’ Screen International

Fri 26 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 8.30pm

Director: Mantin Zandvliet 2009 / Denmark / 86 minutes

Principal Cast: Paprika Steen, Michael Falch, Sara-Marie Maltha

Fri 26 Feb / Cineworld 17 / 6.30pm

Director: Erik Gandini

Principal Cast: Silvio Berlusconi, Flavio Briatore, Rick Canelli

Underpinned by a terrific performance from Paprika Steen, Applause offers an intelligent and inspiring take on the devastating nature of addiction and the long road back to normality. Steen plays actress Thea Barfoed, making a spectacular return to the stage after a spell in rehab. By charm as much as manipulation, she manages to get access to the two young sons she voluntarily gave up for custody. Thea is both monstrous and yet highly sympathetic in facing her manifold challenges: regaining her sons’ trust; renegotiating her relationship with her ex-husband; and delivering a series of challenging performances – all without the aid of alcohol, her drug of choice.

The filmmakers have cited John Cassavetes and Bob Fosse as influences: there is a similar rawness, sensitivity and honesty in the portrayal of character, and a refreshingly subtle and restrained take on a potentially dramatic story.

Sarah Lutton, London Film Festival Programme

The emotional traumas of young Israeli soldiers drafted into the war with Lebanon are recounted in this wrenching concentration of raw emotion, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival. The action is set entirely within the claustrophobic confines of an armored tank; the only views of the outside world are through the cross-hairs of the gun barrel.

Four hot, grime-streaked, twenty-something soldiers are manning the tank amid deafening noise and a sickening rocking and bumping motion when the vehicle is in motion. No one obeys orders, and one by one they go into panic as they realize they have driven into a lethal trap. This must qualify as one of the most antiheroic war movies ever made; not a single character can stomach battle or shows the slightest courage towards his comrades, making mockery of a plaque that extols: “Man is steel. A tank is only iron.”

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter

Fri 26 Feb / Cineworld 17 / 8.30pm

Director: Samuel Maoz

2009 / Israel / 90 minutes

Principal Cast: Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Michael Moshonov, Oshri Cohen

Director Samuel Maoz will be in attendance at this screening.