15a edizione | 4-7 aprile 2024 | Casa del Cinema, Roma
The famous actor Stephen Rea is the very special guest of this year’s IrishFilmFesta. Rea will be in Rome to hold a masterclass, on Saturday, December 3, after the screening of The Butcher Boy. IRISHFILMFESTA will present also the episode The Lost Sons, from the tv series Single Handed 4, for which Rea has won the IFTA for Best Supporting Actor. To complete the tribute to the actor, the short Fluent dysphasia (2004).
The Ballad od Des & Mo, written and directed by James Fair, will be screened on Friday 2nd December at 6.00 pm during the 2011 IrishFilmFesta. This film tells the story of an Irish couple’s adventurous second honey moonin Australia. It was shot and edited in only 72 hours and was screened during the 59th edition of the Melbourne Festival.
James Fair- director and Film Technology lecturer at the Staffordshire University – will explain to the audience the experimental production techniques that allowed him to shoot his film in such a short time span. He is no stranger to this type of techniques, which he applied for his previous movie Watching & Waiting, a film shot over 72 hours for the 2008 Galway Film Fleadh festival.
The festival will feature a competitive section fully dedicated to short films this year as well. Ten short films in various genres and of various length will take part in the competition.
The jury assessing the short films will include film critics Boris Sollazzo and Daniela Catelli, script analyst Matteo D’Arienzo and Leonardo Paulillo, a lawyer specialized in IP and copyrights.
During the event a short will be screened before every film, following last year’s successful display. The winner will be announced on the Festival’s closing evening. The director of the best short film will be awarded with a week end in Rome offered by the hotel Romanico Palace, sponsor of IRISHFILMFESTA.
The audience will also be able to choose their favourite short after the screening of all competing shorts, which will take place on Friday 2nd of December at 5.30 p.m.
The IRISHFILMFESTA opening night will kick off with The Guard, winner of the last Galway Film Fleadh and most successful independent Irish film of all time in terms of box-office receipts.
Together with the lead actor Brendan Gleeson and the Afro-American actor Don Cheadle some of the most famous faces of Irish cinema (Fionnula Flanagan, Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot, Gary Lydon, Pat Shortt, Lawrence Kinlan, Darren Healy) to create a ‘gangster-western’ full of black Irish humour and twists.