This year’s Dublin International Film Festival was stacked and packed with great films from home and abroad.
By Brian Bowe
I ’ve made it! 10 days of new films, industry events and engaging masterclasses have whizzed by, leaving me a dried up husk once inhabited by a cinemagoer. This year’s Dublin International Film Festival was very strong. The programme alone, populated with hot festival circuit favourites like Evil Does Not Exist and Close Your Eyes, was the best I’ve seen DIFF put together in a long time.
Opening up the annual event was the World Premiere of Marian Quinn’s drama TWIG, showcasing some of Ireland’s exciting up-and-coming stars including “the next big thing” Sade Malone, Jade Jordan, Donncha Tynan and Justin Anene. Among its most fervent fans is Festival Director Gráinne Humphreys, calling TWIG “a fascinating combination of Greek tragedy and gangland drama, performed with passion by a rich and diverse cast of emerging film talent and directed with great verve by Marian Quinn.”
Maurice O’Carroll’s tense crime thriller Swing Bout, too, had a great deal of buzz behind it. It follows Toni (Ciara Berkeley), a talented young boxer pushed to a crossroads by her unscrupulous promoters and deceitful coach. The stakes are high as they tempt her with a tempting payday in exchange for throwing the fight in the second round. It’s the usual boxing story, but buoyed up with immersive filmmaking and strong performances.
While Swing Bout and TWIG went down well with audiences, it was Pat Collins’s take on John McGahern’s That They May Face the Rising Sun that stole the headlines by scooping Best Irish Film from the Dublin Film Critics Circle (DFCC) awards. Set in 1980s rural Ireland and starring Barry Ward, That They May Face the Rising Sun is a tribute to the beauty found in everyday experiences, exploring a couple’s journey towards their ideal life. If you missed it at DIFF, you can catch it during its theatrical release, kicking off April 25.
The Festival also boasted a strong Irish documentary line-up. Brendan Gleeson’s Farewell to Hughes’s is a heartfelt tribute to Dublin’s Hughes’s pub as it faces closure. A little pub on a side street behind the Four Courts in Dublin City Centre was a pivotal hub of traditional Irish music for musicians, dancers, singers for over three decades. The film explores a side of Dublin that’s slowly disappearing, a bygone culture of early houses and traditional music, cobblestones and camaraderie. Though the film screened again at the beginning of April at the IFI, at a mere 60mins, I reckon Brendan Gleeson’s Farewell to Hughes’s will be on the telly in no time.
Elsewhere, Ross Killeen’s documentary Don’t Forget to Remember was announced as the overall winner of the DIFF’s Audience Award. Killeen’s poignant film follows artist Asbestos as he navigates his mother’s decline from Alzheimer’s, delving into the fragility of memory and tenderly exploring the impact the disease has on individuals and families.
My favourite film, however, was an international feature: Victor Erice’s Close Your Eyes. The director, best known for The Spirit of the Beehive, from 1973, hasn’t made a feature film in 30 years. Here, he makes a triumphant return to the big screen, using a film-within-a-film structure to explore time, memory and the power of cinema itself. For me, Close Your Eyes is colossal filmmaking, bursting with emotion and masterful skill. It has shades of Bergman’s Persona and Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane. Put simply, it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time.
While Erice won Best Director at the Dublin Film Critics Circle awards, Close Your Eyes lost out on Best film. That honour went to Radu Jude’s anarchic satire Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. “Daring, smart, and angry; this might be my own favourite film in the festival,” remarked Tara Brady, president of the DFCC. The Romanian film has gathered a lot of buzz since premiering at Locarno Film Festival last summer, topping many critic’s end of year lists. It recently enjoyed a brief theatrical window after its DIFF screening, showing in the Irish Film Institute at the end of March.
As with previous iterations, DIFF hosted a series of in-depth masterclasses with some of cinema’s biggest names. Both Steve McQueen and Isabelle Huppert received the Festival’s career achievement award, The Volta. Academy Award winning Director and Turner Prize winning visual artist, McQueen was presented with his award by President Michael D. Higgins on 28 February, before an insightful masterclass moderated by Irish writer and actor Mark O’Halloran; while Huppert, a French screen icon, was given her award by legendary Irish actor Olwen Fouéré the following night. Recognizing outstanding achievements in the film industry, the Volta award is now a prestigious honour in Irish cinema. Past recipients include renowned actors, writers, and directors including Al Pacino, Daniel Day-Lewis, Kristin Scott Thomas, Paolo Sorrentino, Julie Andrews and Thierry Frémaux.
My personal favourite guest this year was veteran Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. That the Festival managed to bring this guy over is a major coup. He’s a proper artist, an innovator whose films – such as Brand Upon the Brain, My Winnipeg and Forbidden Room – are distinct, wonderful, snow-laden beauties of cinema. Soon after delighting us in a masterclass event hosted by Irish filmmaker Paul Duane, in which the filmmaker talked about his life, process and upcoming projects, Maddin was presented with The Maverick Award at the Dublin Film Critics Circle awards, named for late DFCC member George Byrne.
Alongside the DFCC awards, the Festival holds their own awards ceremony which covers Discovery, Short Film and Documentary. The Discovery Awards aim to champion and encourage emerging film talent, and this year’s jury selected Aoife Fealy, Lochlainn McKenna, and Joe Robbins as recipients of the awards. Commenting on the winners, the jury said: “The range of talent on show was exceptional across all disciplines. The work of Lochlainn, Aoife and Joe not only showed immense talent and clarity of creative vision but also huge potential, which felt crucial for this award.”
Best Documentary this year was awarded to Lina Soulem’s Bye Bye Tiberias, a beautiful portrait of four generations of women, exploring the traumatic results of forced exile and separation. It touched the hearts of the jury, who commented: “It is a love letter to the filmmaker’s family across generations and a touching look at the immigrant’s experience of coming home. Congratulations to Lina Soulem on this exceptional film.”
Finally, the short film programmes at DIFF this year were at a very high standard, the strongest lineup I can remember seeing at the Festival. The Short Film Awards, judged by RTÉ’s Michael Doherty, Irish actor Carrie Crowley, director and writer Juanita Wilson, and Filipino-Irish screenwriter and director Nell Hensey, selected a rich and diverse range of titles as their winners. TJ O’Grady-Peyton’s Room Taken picked up the award for Best Irish Short, while 7 Fois, from Switzerland and directed by Christine Wiederkehr, picked up the award for Best International Fiction. The judges picked out three honourable mentions including Lochlainn McKenna’s Two For the Road, Before Madrid, and Moatasem Taha’s touching and well-crafted In the Waiting Room. Speaking to the high standard of shorts this year, the judges remarked: “One of the most impressive line-up of shorts winners in recent memory. The future of film-making is in good hands.
“It was fascinating to view such a range of films, both Irish and International, and then to chew the cud with the other members of the judging panel to decide on the winners. The documentary category was very straightforward, and we had all chosen exactly the same winners. Fiction led to more discussion, but I think we can very happily stand over the winning films there too.”
The Dublin International Film Festival delivered an engaging blend of international features, heartrending documentaries, and impressive shorts that catered to a wide range of cinephiles. While the festival may have lacked groundbreaking innovation in Ireland’s own film offerings, it undoubtedly infused Dublin with a vibrant energy sorely needed after the dreary winter months. As I reflect on the memorable screenings, engaging discussions, and star-studded guest lineup, anticipation builds for what future editions will bring. Next year’s Festival will have to pull out all the stops if it wants to top this year’s event.
