Projects in genres: Northern Irish

Synopsis

8.5 Hours is an intense, contemporary drama about one day in the working lives of four software workers in Dublin. On one particular Monday, each of the characters finds their lives are in turmoil and each undergoes a gruelling series of events between the hours of 9 to 5.30, the 8.5 hours of the title.
 

Synopsis

Sheamy, an Irish ex-priest recently released from prison, arrives in London searching for his former mentor in faith, Father Brendan. Sheamy becomes romantically involved with Londoner, Katie, a survivor of rape who wants to get her sex life up and running again!

As their relationship develops, Katie's demons are laid to rest but Sheamy's explode. Sheamy reveals that he was sexually abused as a boy by Father Brendan, but frames it as a 'great love'.

Katie appalled leaves him. Sheamy facing the truth goes crazy and branding Father Brendan a hypocrite attacks him in a church while Fr Brendan is saying Mass.

He is arrested and again is set to return to prison.

Is Sheamy trapped, doomed by past, fate – or can he finally find justice?

Synopsis

Luke fancies Mandy, Mandy fancies Harry, Harry fancies Helen and Helen fancies anyone. Mandy fancies (unconsciously, of course). This is a film about friendships and relationships and how they keep coming in the way of each other.

Synopsis

Hunger follows life in the Maze prison, Northern Ireland with an interpretation of the highly emotive events surrounding the 1981 IRA hunger strike, led by Bobby Sands. With an epic eye for detail, the film provides a timely exploration of what happens when body and mind are pushed to the uttermost limit.

Synopsis

'identities' charts the multicoloured, multicultural transgender community in Ireland. Five personal stories give shape to the vibrant, parallel worlds of Transvestism, Transsexualism, Drag, Sexual identity, and Gender Dysphoria.

Intercutting black and white interviews with fly on the wall footage, each character's daily experience is laid bare. Vivid art performances offer more abstract and deeply personal self-representation. Opening our eyes to the potential of existing in fantasy, reality is thrown into sharp relief. At its heart, this is a film about the human spirit. Overcoming stereotype and categorisation, the gender construct breaks open, allowing personality and human emotion a path to expression.

Synopsis

Synopsis

Set during the Cannes Film Festival, The Making of Plus One packs a punch and pokes more than a little fun at the celebrity obsession fuelling the modern day film industry, full of fads, festival red carpets, creatively incongruous commerciality and artistic dispensability in the far from glamorous reality that is independent feature filmmaking.

Synopsis

Katherine Mellor is a private investigator with the task of monitoring Michael, a businessman suspected of infidelity. For three days she follows his movements and interactions during his ‘business’ trip to Galway, gathering evidence that will incriminate the unsuspecting Michael.

However, when Katherine meets Tomas, an escort that she hires to provide cover for one evening, she realises that she has perhaps interpreted Michael’s situation incorrectly. What follows is a journey into her understanding of love, truth and faithfulness.

When faced with the reality that her spying will determine Michael’s future, Katherine is forced to make difficult decisions that put her own principles to the test.

Synopsis

Buried under concrete and controversy on the outskirts of Dublin lie the remains of Ireland's pop star priest - Father Michael Cleary. In 1991 as a student Alison Millar moved into his house and started filming him. Fifteen years on, using her unseen archive, this film is the story of the secret life of a man who fooled her, his family and an entire nation.

Synopsis

When Anton O'Neill returns home after five years at sea, he finds that 1970's Ireland is a radically different place to the one he left behind. Northern Ireland is in flames, and civil unrest has spilled south of the border to his beloved home in County Cavan. Blinded by hatred and misguided patriotism 'Anton' is led into an illicit world of violence and is forced to choose between his family and his country. Hunted and on the run, Anton is drawn into a battle of wills with the law and his former accomplices, ending in a showdown in which he must risk everything to protect the woman he loves.

Synopsis

In a climate of rapid technological advance in the fast booming baby business, perhaps a little pause for thought is required on behalf of the patients. Couples with infertility issues, biological clock challenged career women, and the gay community to name some can now achieve the previously inconceivable and are prepared to pay a high price for potential failure. Exploring a week in the life a typical 'cycling' batch of women and their donors preparing to undergo Assisted Reproductive Technology treatments at a progressive private clinic in the USA, the film asks 'what if...' What if - something entirely medically conceivable went amiss? If the architects of ART went the way that any successful artist might - and lost the run of themselves? Are not the baby designers of the future in danger of becoming the architects not only of their own downfall, but potentially tolling the death knell to the survival of our species?

Synopsis

Regarded by his neighbours as a harmless misfit, eliciting idle kindness, benign tolerance and occasional abuse, Josie has spent all his adult life as the caretaker of a crumbling petrol station on the outskirts of a small town in the mid-west of Ireland. He is limited, lonely, yet relentlessly optimistic and, in his own peculiar way, happy. But then over the course of a summer, Josie’s world shifts. A teenager, David, comes to work with him. David likes him. They open up to each other and suddenly the lonely adult is drinking cans down at the railway tracks with the local kids. He is awakened to needs in himself that have never been met. And Carmel, from the local shop, who has always been kind to him, stirs feelings within him that he struggles to name. And then one thoughtless moment unravels the threads of faltering friendship. Events spiral. Josie’s life is changed, forever.