BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD FROM FRI 3RD BLACKBERRY
LOVE LIES BLEEDING FROM FRI 3RD
LA CHIMERA FROM FRI 10TH
MADE IN ENGLAND: FROM FRI 10TH
THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER
MUCH ADO ABOUT DYING FROM FRI 10TH
EAT/SLEEP/CHEER/REPEAT FROM FRI 17TH HOARD FROM FRI 17TH
TIGER STRIPES FROM FRI 17TH
ROME, OPEN CITY FROM FRI 17TH
PIANO DREAMS FROM FRI 24TH
RANSOM '79 FROM FRI 24TH
TRAINSPOTTING 4K FROM FRI 24TH
THE BEAST FROM FRI 31ST
THE OUTCASTS FROM FRI 31ST
For bookings and film information, please see our website, www.ifi.ie, or contact the IFI Box Office on 01-6793477 (open 12.30 to 21.00 daily) or at 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
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Conc. €8.40 (€7.90) 5pm–10pm €13.00 (€12.00) Conc. €10.40 (€9.90)
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12.30pm–3pm €11.40 (€10.40)
Conc. €8.80 (€8.30) 3pm–10pm €14.00 (€13.00)
Conc. €11.40 (€10.90)
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Open Captioned screening
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The exclusivity of films is correct at the time of print. All films exclusive to the IFI are kindly supported by the Arts Council.
TUES
WED
THUR
Irish Film Institute in partnership with GAZE present UNMASCED, a celebration of lesbian and trans-masc visibility in cinema.
The day-long event will showcase queer lives through two captivating documentaries and a selection of incredible short films spanning genres, continents, and decades.
GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival takes place from August 1st–5th, 2024
www.gaze.ie | #UNMASCED
SAT 4TH (13.30)
First screened at GAZE in 2018, Outitude is a multi-award winning documentary which charts the richness of lesbian grass-roots activism, collectives, community, academia, and politics across the island of Ireland from the 1970s to the present day.
This heartfelt film delves into the stories of poets, writers, activists, and self-proclaimed bar dykes, alongside queer and curious women from all walks of life.
It explores what defines, connects, and unites us, offering a kaleidoscopic view of the richness of the Irish lesbian community and features contributions from Nell McCafferty, Ailbhe Smyth, Katherine Zappone, Una Mullally, Mary Dorcey, and Marie Quiery.
90 mins, Ireland, 2018, Digital
SAT 4TH (15.30)
Ireland is the land of storytellers, and throughout GAZE’s 32-year history, we have had the privilege of platforming many queer tales from Irish filmmakers. This selection of sapphic shorts collates some of the incredible works previously screened at the festival. Join us in celebrating the art and artists of our small but mighty island .
Programme includes:
Late Bloomers, Breast Friends, Snuff, Try and Touch, Worthy, First Date, New Threads, Portaloo, Don’t Go Where I Can’t Find You
SAT 4TH (18.15)
To defy gender norms is an understated act of bravery. It is to redefine beauty - craft it rather than plagiarise it, and wear queerness like a badge of honour. It is to dare to be different, to stand out from the crowd, but even so, butches, studs, mascs, and transmascs remain largely invisible in cinema. As the saying goes, “can’t see, can’t be”, and these short films provide affirming visibility, catapulting our stories out of the shadows with swagger and charm.
Programme includes:
DES!RE, Welcome to a Bright White Limbo, Audrey’s Beard, Butterflies, The Brother, What Does a Lesbian Look Like?, A Day in the Life of a Bull-Dyke, Hormonal, Butch Coyolxauhqui, Code Switch, Nails & Beauty
SAT 4TH (20.30)
Immersive and sensorial, Beyond the Aggressives: 25 Years Later revisits four of the original subjects from Daniel Peddle’s groundbreaking 2005 film The Aggressives — a seminal documentary centering masculinepresenting people of colour assigned female at birth. The now iconic Kisha, Trevon, Octavio, and Chin are back, sharing an array of their triumphs and challenges.
Through the voices of today’s queer BIPOC, who felt represented and inspired by The Aggressives, the new film also delves into how much the language, culture, and visibility of the transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming community has evolved, and grapples with the many complexities of gender identity, expectations, and expression.
78 mins, USA, 2023, Digital
The IFI is delighted to present a selection of films from The World Cinema Project, a programme of The Film Foundation, founded by Martin Scorsese, which is dedicated to protecting and preserving film history. By working in partnership with archives and studios, the foundation has helped to restore over 1,000 films, which are made accessible to the public through festivals, museums, and educational institutions around the world. In the words of Scorsese, ‘The World Cinema Project was created to help underserved countries preserve their cinematic treasures. We want to help strengthen and support the work of international archives and provide a resource for those countries lacking the archival and technical facilities to do the work themselves.’ The project has restored films from 30 different countries representing the rich diversity of world cinema, work which chimes with the efforts of the IFI Irish Film Archive to preserve Ireland’s moving image heritage for future generations.
Film restorations provided by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata.
Season notes by David O’Mahony unless otherwise stated.
A torrent of sexual obsession, revenge, and betrayal is unleashed under one roof in this venomous melodrama from South Korean master Kim Ki-young.
Immensely popular in its home country when it was released, The Housemaid is the story of the devastating effect an unstable housemaid has on the domestic life of a bourgeois, morally dubious music teacher, his devoted wife, and young children. Kim’s engrossing, finely calibrated tale of class warfare and familial disintegration has been hugely influential on the new generation of South Korean filmmakers.
Memories of Underdevelopment traces the history of Sergio, a comfortable, middleclass intellectual who, a year after the Castro revolution, and unlike his family and wife, decides not to leave the country.
Estranged from the major socio-political upheaval that is changing the surrounding reality, Sergio is a misfit, caught between a past that he rejects and present transformations he cannot or will not embrace. His only income is the compensation he receives following the nationalisation of his properties.
Under the pretext of writing a book, Sergio spends his time trying to understand what is happening in his country.
110 mins, South Korea, 1960, Digital, Subtitled
97 mins, Cuba, 1968, Digital, Subtitled
One of the great films of the Soviet era, The Colour of Pomegranates is an unconventional biopic of 18th century Armenian ashug (a kind of folk poet or musician) Sayat-Nova. Taking a lyrical and mystical approach to its subject, the film explores the man’s life in chapters using a series of visually stunning tableaux that emphasise the effect of his surroundings and culture on his art.
A film that exists almost entirely outside of the standard grammar of cinema, and presented here in a beautiful new digital restoration that enhances the immersive experience of the imagery and soundtrack.
Med Hondo’s first feature won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival and instantly established the director as a giant of African and world cinema.
A loosely constructed narrative that chronicles the travails of a West African-born accountant who arrives in Paris to pursue his dreams, the film meticulously documents the challenges he encounters, including racial, housing, and employment discrimination.
A scathing attack on colonialism, the film is also a shocking exposé of racism, and a brutal and ironic indictment of Western capitalist values.
79 mins, Armenia, 1969, Digital, Subtitled
Notes by Kevin Coyne
98 mins, Mauritania, 1970, Digital, Subtitled
With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave-influenced fantasy drama, two young lovers long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of France, but their escape plan is beset by complications both concrete and mystical.
Characterised by a dream-like quality that is further underscored by the film’s striking imagery, Touki Bouki presents colours and textures rarely depicted with such rawness in Western cinema, presenting a fresh and original depiction of twentieth-century Africa.
Impossible to see for decades, Bahram Beyzaie’s dazzling The Stranger and the Fog, about Ayat, the titular stranger who arrives, bloodied, bruised, and amnesiac, to an isolated fishing village on a drifting boat, is an endlessly symbolic tale in which uncontrollable forces of nature, superstition, ritual, and violence disorient the viewer in exhilarating ways, now presented in a new digital restoration from the original camera negative.
As Ayat recuperates, he marries a local widow, despite resistance from the community. Years later, a group of armed men come in search of Ayat.
89 mins, Senegal, 1973, Digital, Subtitled
140 mins, Iran, 1974, Digital, Subtitled
SUN 19TH (15.30)
Screened publicly just once before it was banned and then lost for decades, this jewel of Iranian cinema can now take its place as one of the most singular works of the country’s New Wave.
A stylised murder mystery, Chess of the Wind unfolds in a candlelit mansion where a web of greed, violence, and betrayal ensnares the heirs to a family fortune as they vie for control of their recently deceased matriarch’s estate. An exquisitely controlled mood piece that erupts in a subversive final act in which class conventions, gender roles, and even time itself are upended with shocking ferocity.
SAT 25TH (13.30)
Jealousy and violence take centre stage in this claustrophobic melodrama, a tautly constructed character study set in the slums of Manila. Lino Brocka crafts an eviscerating portrait of an innocent daughter and her bitter mother as women scorned. Insiang leads a quiet life dominated by household duties, but after she is raped by her mother’s lover and abandoned by the young man who claims to care for her, she exacts vicious revenge. A savage commentary on the degradations of urban poverty, especially for women, Insiang was the first Philippine film ever to play at Cannes.
SUN 26TH (15.30)
With its blend of realism and humanity, Héctor Babenco’s electrifying look at lost youth fighting to survive on the bottom rung of Brazilian society helped put the country’s cinema on the international map.
Shot with documentary-like immediacy on the streets of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Pixote follows the eponymous preteen runaway (the heartbreaking Fernando Ramos da Silva, whose own too-short life tragically mirrored that of his character) as he escapes a nightmarish juvenile detention centre only to descend into a life of crime alongside a makeshift family of fellow outcasts.
Join us for free screenings of films from the IFI Irish Film Archive every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Simply collect your tickets online (with a small booking fee) or at IFI Box Office.
PROGRAMME ONE WHEELS
Cathal Black’s directorial debut adapts John McGahern’s story of a young man’s return home to the family farm where his stepmother attempts to broker fraught relations with his father.
Dir. Cathal Black, 25 mins, Ireland, 1976, Digital
PROGRAMME TWO
SWALLOWS
Another assured debut, Michael O’Connell’s adaptation of the short story Swallows, where an isolated rural Garda is reminded of his love of Paganini when he meets a violin-playing surveyor.
Dir. Michael O’Connell , 20 mins, Ireland, 2000, Digital
See also: From the Vaults: John McGahern: A Private World (page 13) and That They May Face the Rising Sun .
Bristol’s Portishead are one of the most enigmatic of bands to have emerged from British music over the last three decades. Having emerged seemingly fully formed with a singular sound and vision for its presentation, they have just three albums to their name in that time, a small but massively influential body of work.
Appearing in cinemas to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary, this document of Portishead performing live in New York was filmed in July 1997, just weeks before the release of the band’s self-titled second album. Augmented for the occasion by a 28-piece orchestra, it sees Geoff Barrow, Adrian Utley, and magnetic, charismatic singer Beth Gibbons giving remarkable renditions of new songs and highlights of the album including "Cowboys" and "Over", as well as favourites such as "Sour Times" and "Glory Box" from their 1994 debut album Dummy.
Notes by
93 mins, USA-UK, 1998, Digital
Notes by Kevin Coyne
SUN 12TH (16.00)
Along with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd is one of the giants of silent comedy. Despite his deserved place in such august company, Lloyd is perhaps the least screened of this hallowed trinity, and so we’re delighted to redress the balance with this screening of possibly his finest, funniest, and most enthralling film, containing one of the most genuinely iconic sequences in cinema history. When Harold moves to the city to make his fortune, the lies he tells his hometown fiancée about his success backfire when she comes to join him, resulting in all manner of scrapes.
We are delighted to welcome Stephen Horne to the IFI to perform at this screening. Stephen has long been internationally considered one of the leading silent film accompanists. A house pianist at London’s BFI Southbank for over thirty years, he regularly performs internationally and in recent years his accompaniments have met with acclaim at film festivals in Pordenone, Bologna, San Francisco, Telluride, Paris, Cannes, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai, Seoul, Istanbul, Berlin and Vienna.
74 mins, USA, 1923, Digital, Black & White, Silent Notes by Kevin Coyne
THUR 16TH (18.30)
On May 17th, 1974, three bombs exploded in Dublin City Centre killing 27 people and injuring 258. Later that evening, a bomb in Monaghan Town killed 7 more innocent people. This day saw the greatest loss of life in any single day of the Troubles. However, after seven weeks, investigations into the bombings were closed down and inquests into the Dublin casualties were never completed. In 1993, the Ulster Volunteer Force claimed sole responsibility for the atrocities, but many families and survivors believe that the British Military were involved.
Screening on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the bombings, this film gives voice to members of the Justice for the Forgotten, tireless campaigners for truth and justice for their loved ones.
Director Joe Lee (406 Days: The Debenhams Picket Line) and members of Justice for the Forgotten will join a post-screening Q&A with historian Donal Fallon (Three Castles Burning).
95 mins, Ireland, 2024, Digital Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
Pat Collins’s long-held admiration for John McGahern, now manifest in his exquisite adaptation of That They May Face the Rising Sun, was first revealed in this documentary portrait, completed just a year before McGahern’s passing in March 2006.
Since the publication of his first book in 1963, John McGahern was at the cultural heart of Irish life and was loved by critics and the reading public alike. His memoirs (published in 2005) form the backbone of the documentary.
It is a testament to Collins's sensitivity, as both interviewer and filmmaker, that he gets the reluctant McGahern to open up on camera. The results, offering a rare insight into the creative process, are by turn fascinating and quietly moving, a portrait of an artist at peace in his final days.
Gu Wentong (Xin Baiqing) is a divorced middle-aged food critic. His young daughter Smiley lives with his sister Wenhui and her husband. Gu takes us on his work trips to the local eateries in vibrant Beijing accompanied by photographer colleague Ouyang (Huang Yao) with whom an unlikely bond has developed. One day, Gu learns that his father, estranged following an incident forty years ago, is living alone in Beidaihe, a coastal town 300 kilometres north east of Beijing, and he and sister Wenhui decide to reconnect with their father.
Chinese director Zhang Lu’s film is beautifully paced and structured, a warm and nuanced intergenerational drama, and portrayal of contemporary life in Beijing's lesser-known Xicheng district. Home to the White Pagoda, a 13th-century Buddhist temple said to cast no shadow, it stands as metaphor and embodiment of Gu’s life.
52 mins, Ireland, 2005, Digital Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
144 mins, China, 2023, Digital, Subtitled. Notes by Marie-Pierre Richard, Programme Curator & Co-organiser, East Asia Film Festival Ireland & EAFFI Discoveries
Join us for this month’s screening at 13.00 on Sunday, May 26th. The film chosen could be anything from throughout the history of cinema, from a silent classic to a preview of a hotly anticipated upcoming release.
Whether it’s a title that one might expect to see at the IFI, or a film more at home in the multiplexes, the secret, closely guarded even from IFI staff, will be kept until the title appears onscreen. Expect the unexpected and take a chance, with tickets costing just €6.20.
A full list of previous screenings is available from www.ifi.ie/mystery-matinee-archive
The worth of a dancer’s career is often measured by the time spent in the limelight. Yet a dancer’s experience of their career extends beyond the stage. An innovative series of short films focused on women in dance in Ireland, This is It reveals unspoken values that are often difficult to articulate and easy to forget, creating a unique living archive of untold stories.
Collaborating with filmmaker Pato Cassinoni, animator Alan Early, and composer Irene Buckley, Murphy presents eight dance portraits: Jean Butler, Alicia Christofi Walshe, Lisa Cliffe, Finola Cronin, Joan Davis, Katherine O'Malley, Mary Nunan, and Angie Smalis.
Funded by The Arts Council | An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Created in association with Dance Ireland, Dance Cork Firkin Crane, Galway Dance, Mermaid Arts Centre, Coiscéim Dance Theatre, Dance Limerick and Joan Davis | Gorse Hill.
SAMANTHA CUTLER & DANIEL SNADDON / SARAH
SCRIMGEOUR & JAC HAMMAN CLIO BARNARD
SUN 26TH (11.00)
Gorgeous, colourful animations from Magic Light Pictures, of the much-loved Donaldson/Scheffler stories. Find out what happens with the fighting Smeds and Smoos families, whose kids, Janet and Bill, have fallen in love and try to get away together in a rocket to explore other planets. In their efforts to find the pair, can the two families discover how to get along? Followed by Superworm, that super-long, super-strong earthworm who always comes to the rescue of bugs and animals in distress. When he’s captured by a wicked Wizard Lizard who will come to his rescue? Luckily, all of Superworm’s insect friends have a cunning plan… Fun free activity sheets to take away.
THUR 30TH (18.30)
English playwright Andrea Dunbar, author of Rita, Sue And Bob Too, filmed by Alan Clarke in 1987, led a short, hard life, enduring a series of troubled relationships and addiction to alcohol before her death from a brain haemorrhage at just 29. Her three children, including daughter Lorraine, subsequently faced their own difficulties and tragedies. Here, director Clio Barnard takes actual recordings of Lorraine and others of Dunbar’s family and friends and has them lip-synched by the actors on screen, adding an extra layer of expressiveness and effectiveness to these often harrowing aural documents. The screening will be introduced by theatre and opera director Tom Creed.
53 mins approx., UK, 2022/2021, Digital
Notes by Alicia McGivern
94 mins, UK, 2010, Digital
Notes by Kevin Coyne
WED 29TH & FRI 31ST (11.00)
The story of Bernard Jordan’s escape from a care home to attend D-Day landing anniversary events in France is this year’s choice for the May film tour, organised by access>CINEMA and the Irish Film Institute to coincide with the Bealtaine Festival. Based on a true story, Michael Caine is brilliantly convincing as the escapee Bernard Jordan who defies authorities and sets out to join his fellow veterans. In what became her final performance, Glenda Jackson gives a wonderful last hurrah as wife Irene in this moving depiction by two screen icons of an enduring marriage and the lasting impact of war.
The screening on Wednesday 29th will be Open Captioned.
96 mins, UK, 2023, Digital
Notes by Alicia McGivern
Bookings on OPEN TABLE or the IFI Website
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IFI YOUTH PANEL PRESENTS
JONATHAN DAYTON & VALERIE FARIS
MON 27TH (18.00)
The IFI Youth Panel (IFIYP) is proud to present the 2006 indie classic Little Miss Sunshine. Follow a dysfunctional family travelling across America for a beauty pageant and watch them discover more about themselves, each other, and the importance of a good ice cream! With a star-studded cast including Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, and Paul Dano, this film evokes both tears and laughter alike.
IFIYP is a youth-led programming group formed from 22 & Under cardholders. Each month they will programme a film event together and this is their first choice to mark start of summer. As film fanatics aged between 16–22, they aspire to encourage others to avail of all that the IFI has to offer. IFIYP say: “We’d recommend wearing vibrant colours to the screening, particularly yellow! Stay to meet the YP after the screening and discuss the film further."
104
Rose Glass follows up Saint Maud, her incendiary debut from 2019, with an unapologetically queer and decidedly pulpy thriller that solidifies her status as a visionary with a gift for characterisation and eye-grabbing imagery.
The setting is a gym in small-town New Mexico where manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) casts a baleful eye over the bulging physiques of the clientele. Her attention is caught by chiselled beauty Jackie (Katy O’Brian); sparks fly, steroids are taken, iron is pumped, but they run afoul of Lou’s dad (a marvellously coiffured Ed Harris), whose criminal exploits threaten the young lovers, plus Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone), and brother-in-law JJ (Dave Franco). Gleefully violent and amoral, Love Lies Bleeding is maximalist filmmaking that revels in excess whilst never losing sight of the burning passion at its core.
There will be Open Captioned screenings on Monday 6th at 18.20 and Wednesday 8th at 13.15.
CINEMA: FROM FRI 3RD IFI@HOME: FROM MON, JUNE 3RD
Etero (Eka Chavleishvili) never wanted a husband and has dismissed all thoughts of marriage; however, the flinty, self-sufficient 48-year-old shopkeeper is the subject of malicious gossip in the small Georgian village where she lives, largely because she lives alone and has remained a virgin all her life, a choice she is comfortable with.
Unexpectedly, and rather inconveniently, Etero finds herself passionately falling for delivery driver Murman (Temiko Chichinadze), and is suddenly faced with the decision to pursue a relationship or continue a life of independence. Etero must grapple with her feelings and decide how to find her own path to happiness.
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is an endearing, bittersweet portrait of an independent woman at the mercy of society’s limited expectations.
104 mins, UK-USA, 2023, Digital Notes by David O’Mahony
110 mins, Georgia-Switzerland, 2023, Digital, Subtitled Notes by David O’Mahony
Martin Scorsese presents a personal and moving look at two of British cinema’s greatest filmmakers. Powell and Pressburger created enduring classics of British cinema including The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. In the words of Scorsese, their films were “grand, poetic, wise, adventurous, headstrong, enraptured by beauty, deeply romantic, and completely uncompromising”.
We learn how, from a young age, Scorsese was captivated by their films, how they helped shape his own filmmaking and how a later friendship with Michael Powell left an indelible mark on his life.
Brought to life with a treasure trove of rare archival material from the personal collections of Powell, Pressburger, and Scorsese, the story is told using diaries, audio recordings, home movies, personal snapshots, and, of course, the films themselves.
There will be Open Captioned screenings on Friday 10th at 13.00 and Thursday 16th at 18.00.
On his release from prison, Arthur (Josh O’Connor) immediately visits Flora (Isabella Rossellini), mother of his lost love. Although Arthur’s tendency is to keep to himself, he soon falls in with a group of tombaroli, grave robbers who loot the ancient Etruscan tombs prevalent in the area for goods to sell on the black market, the very activity that put Arthur in jail in the first place. He is further drawn out of his shell by Flora’s housekeeper Italia (Carol Duarte) and the children she has been hiding in Flora’s house without her knowledge.
This beguiling film from Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, 2014; Happy as Lazzaro, 2018) makes for not just an entertaining narrative with occasional touches of magic realism, but also a thoughtful meditation on loss, the implacable nature of time, and the micro and macrocosmic influence of the past.
There will be Open Captioned screenings on Sunday 12th at 15.45 and Tuesday 14th at 15.10.
131 mins, UK, 2023, Digital Notes by David O’Mahony
131 mins, Italy-France-Switzerland, 2023, Digital, Subtitled Notes by Kevin Coyne
Filmmaker Simon finds his life drastically interrupted when he is called back from Delhi to London to care for his dying uncle David, an eccentric, cantankerous, flamboyant thesp obsessed with King Lear. David has been given months to live but ‘improves’ when Simon arrives and they embark on a five-year odyssey from the squalor of David’s rubbish-filled flat. Simon tries to curb David’s urge to give all his money away to his handsome Brazilian carer and friendly but self-interested neighbours. Despite the house burning down, homelessness, cancer, and the dreaded ‘care home’, Simon helps David to create an exuberant final performance to send him on his way. Though at times painfully intimate, Chambers’s film ultimately celebrates a joyous spirit which transcends the indignities of old age.
The opening night screening on Friday 10th will be followed by a Q&A with director Simon Chambers.
Welcome to the surprising world of cheerleading in Ireland, where athletic young hopefuls search for their place in the world through the sport they love. The colourful members of Team Ireland: Jessica, Jayleesa, Blathnaid, Dean, Taylor and Rickie – by turns fun-loving, ambitious, despondent, and determined –strive for perfection under the tutelage of their anxious coach, Hilton, who battles to keep the team on track despite ill-discipline and injuries, as they journey to the World Championships in America. Award-winning director Tanya Doyle (The House), a working-class Dubliner herself, captures these working-class teens on the brink of adulthood as they explore gender, sexuality, and personal identity, and learn about the uplifting power of team membership and friendship. It is a film about belonging and self-acceptance, and having fun. There will be Open Captioned screenings on Friday 17th at 13.00 and Tuesday 21st at 18.30.
Tanya Doyle, Jayleesa Cunningham, and Rickie Kavanagh will join for a post-screening Q&A on opening night.
82 mins, Ireland-UK, 2022, Digital Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
87 mins, Ireland, 2024, Digital Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
FROM FRI 17TH
Audacious and unsettling, Luna Carmoon’s debut feature is an uncompromising tale that explores the repressed trauma and grief of its damaged protagonist against the backdrop of her sexual awakening.
Cameron draws on her own experience for this visceral psychological drama that won her the award for Best First Feature at the BFI London Film Festival 2023. The first section is set in 1984, where Maria (played as a child by Lily-Beau Leach) lives with her mother, Cynthia (Hayley Squires), an obsessive hoarder; from Maria’s perspective, the mountains of festering rubbish are a magical kingdom replete with hidden treasures.
Years later, the now-teenage Maria (Saura Lightfoot Leon) is a struggling misfit in foster care; when she meets Michael (Joseph Quinn), another troubled teen, they develop an intense and almost animalistic attraction.
There will be Open Captioned screenings on Sunday 19th at 15.45 and Thursday 23rd at 20.30.
CINEMA: FROM FRI 17TH
IFI@HOME: FROM FRI, JUNE 21ST
Winner of the Grand Prize in Cannes’s Critics’s Week selection last year, and the Malaysian entry for this year’s Oscars, Tiger Stripes has also suffered the indignity of being so heavily censored in its country of origin as to have its director disown the version shown there.
Following in the tradition of films such as Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) and Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett, 2000), it sees a girl on the cusp of adulthood undergo unusual and terrifying changes as her body reaches maturity.
Twelve-year-old Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) is something of a tomboy, often to the disapproval of her parents, teachers, and friends, particularly Farah (Deena Ezral), who turns on her friend, leading a campaign of bullying when Zaffan becomes the first girl in her class to begin menstruating. However, the changes in Zaffan are much more severe than anyone realises.
126 mins, UK, 2023, Digital Notes by David O’Mahony
95 mins, Malaysia-Taiwan-France-Germany-NetherlandsSingapore-Qatar-Indonesia, 2023, Digital, Subtitled Notes by Kevin Coyne
Newly restored, Roberto Rossellini’s neo-realist masterpiece depicts the struggles of four Roman partisans during the German occupation. Resistance leader Giorgio Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero) flees the Gestapo and seeks a place to hide with the help of his friend Francesco, his pregnant fiancée Pina, and the priest who is due to marry them. Shot only six months after the liberation of Rome, Rossellini and collaborators (including Federico Fellini) depict a city dominated by fear, violence, moral degradation and the raw courage of its inhabitants. Neo-realism itself arose out of the waning months of the war, and no film better conveys those circumstances than the seminal Rome, Open City.
FROM FRI 24TH
When Gary Lennon (I Dream in Photos) lived next door to a Music Conservatory in Shanghai he became acutely aware of the piano-mania sweeping the country. With over 40 million piano students in China, the competition to secure places in the country’s top music schools is intense. We meet three talented students – aged 8, 12 and 19 – who practice up to ten hours a day, their dedication matched by the support of their teachers and parents, who make personal and financial sacrifices to ensure their children have the best possible chance of success. These intimate portraits offer a fresh perspective on the complex reality of the new Chinese middle class.
The opening night screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Gary Lennon.
FROM FRI 24TH
Legendary Irish reporter Charlie Bird is determined to break one final story before his life is cut short by Motor Neurone Disease. His sources have given him an extraordinary true crime story, one that had remained secret for decades - the attempt by a criminal gang to extort millions from the Irish government. Though the disease has already taken Charlie's voice, a voice-app on his iPad allows him to conduct interviews, and he continues to chase the story even as his strength falters. Ransom '79 reconstructs a scarcely-believable sequence of events that led from farce to tragedy. It also reveals how one man can find respite in doing the thing he loves, even as he faces his own mortality.
The opening night screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Colm Quinn.
103 mins, Italy, 1945, Digital, Subtitled Notes by David O’Mahony
85 mins, Japan, 2023, Digital, Subtitled. Notes by Sunniva O'Flynn
87 mins, Ireland, 2024, Digital Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
Trainspotting exploded onto cinema screens and into popular culture, the pounding drums of Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life accompanying Renton’s (Ewan McGregor) belittling of consumerist society immediately iconic, and its soundtrack as ubiquitous as that of Pulp Fiction Renton, Spud (Ewen Bremner), and fellow heroin addict Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) fall in and out of love with the drug, yet somehow, accompanied by terrifying contemporary Begbie (Robert Carlyle), manage to devise a getrich-quick scheme. Rereleased in a new digital restoration, its flashy style and crackling dialogue can’t mask that this energetic adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel is, ultimately, a bleak, nihilistic depiction of drug culture and addiction.
FROM FRI 31ST
An intoxicating, unclassifiable, centuries-spanning mélange of love, obsession, existential anxiety, and dystopian futurism, Bertrand Bonello’s visionary The Beast lays justifiable claim to being the most bracingly original French film of the year. We first encounter Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux), a woman plagued by a neurotic conviction that something awful, the titular beast, is waiting in her future, and Louis (George McKay), her admirer, in belle époque Paris, the first of several interconnected timelines. In 2014, she is an actor auditioning for a role whilst he appears as her incel stalker. In 2044, when human emotions are deemed a threat, Gabrielle must navigate her past lives to purify her DNA and excise her fear and unhappiness.
Tickets for the 17.50 screening on Monday 27th will be €10.40 for IFI & Alliance Française members.
FROM FRI 31ST
Enjoying cult status among folk horror fans, The Outcasts, set in pre-famine Ireland when poverty and magic were rife, sees a young girl (Mary Ryan) discover a magical world of the imagination through ‘a wild, ungodly man’ (Mick Lally). When she is accused of witchcraft she uses her own supernatural powers for protection. Robert Wynne-Simmons combines horror, comedy and tragedy to produce this intelligent and visually stunning directorial debut. A 2k restoration by the IFI Irish Film Archive for IFI’s Digital Restoration Project funded by Screen Ireland/ Fís Éireann with further support from Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) and EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.
The opening night screening will be followed by a director Q&A.
94 mins, UK-USA, 1996, 4K Digital Notes by Kevin Coyne
146 mins, France-Canada, 2023, Digital, Subtitled. Notes by David O’Mahony
95 mins, Ireland, 1982, Digital Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn
The spectre of Patricia Highsmith looms large over Sébastien Marnier’s ingeniously plotted mystery, a tale of deception, cross, and double cross set against the fading grandeur of a sprawling family mansion, boasting a central character every bit as slippery and adept at reinvention as Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. The great Laure Calamy plays Stéphane, a woman in her forties who lives in financial precarity; she works at a fish canning factory while her lover serves out a prison sentence. One night, Stéphane impulsively contacts her estranged, and extravagantly wealthy father, Serge (Jacques Weber); posing as an entrepreneur, she attempts to ingratiate herself with Serge’s wife, Louise (Dominique Blanc), who is immediately suspicious of this interloper.
The Origin of Evil is a delicious skewering of the decadent excesses of the aristocracy and the climbers who aspire to be among them.
A sleepy seaside village in 1920s Sussex is rocked by a plague of elaborately profane poison pen letters in Thea Sharrock’s delightfully foul-mouthed comedy, which gives free reign to the considerable comedic talents of Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley to uproarious effect. Edith Swan (Colman), a spinster living with her dictatorial father, Edward (Timothy Spall), is next door neighbour to Rose Gooding (Buckley), a rambunctious Irish immigrant; relations between the pair are frosty at best, and when Edith starts receiving truly foul anonymous letters, accusing the god-fearing woman of all manner of unspeakable degradations, the finger of guilt would appear to point squarely at Rose. The letters prompt a national uproar, and a trial ensues. However, as police officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) begins to investigate, she suspects that all may not be as it appears.
