Using a visual rich balance of documentary and animation KINGS OF SUMAVA poetically explores the duality of hero, villain and reunites former Czech immigrant Vlasta Bukovsky and Czech people smuggler Josep Hasil. The infamous boarder guard who lead those who needed to leave communist Czechoslovakia through the mountains of Sumava and to freedom. Due to the communist regimes failed attempts to catch Josef his family were imprisoned for over 180 years.
Based on the book 'Lost Lives', which records every single death and its circumstances since the beginning of the modern conflict known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, this heartfelt documentary is a cinematic homage to those, from all sides, who lost their lives. Powerfully narrated by famous Irish and Northern Irish actors, including Kenneth Branagh, Brendan Gleeson, Roma Downey, Liam Neeson, Bríd Brennan and Stephen Rea, the film weaves archive footage with recordings of family and friends responding to the devastating news of the death of loved ones. A score performed by the Ulster Orchestra and striking cinematography complete this elegiac piece. The last entry in the book is Lyra McKee, a journalist who was fatally shot in 2019 – an essential reminder that peace can be a fragile process.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Love Strand - World premiere
Beginning in Vienna where the filmmaker meets her father, David, whom she hasn’t seen since she was two. Through a mixture of onscreen text, sit down interviews and archival footage, David’s early life as a teenage activist in Northern Ireland is revealed. The film then travels to Belfast and segues into an impossible reconstruction of David’s early years. In and attempt to better know him, Garnett uses previously recorded audio interviews to skillfully craft a lip-synced, cross-gender performance where she impersonates the his youthful presence and casts a transgender actress in the role of his girlfriend. The film cycles through various camera modes – narrative vignettes on RED alongside handheld camcorder footage of contemporary Belfast street life mixed with these verbatim re-enactments – to create a fragmented account of a teenager struggling to find an identity in a rapidly deteriorating society, and the parallel struggle of a filmmaker to connect with her estranged father. The layers of texture in this film mirror the fractured lens of history, and point to the impossibility of filmmaking as a container for 'Truth'. In TROUBLE, cinema is a means of rebuilding family ties of highlighting the complexities of representation and the construction of identity.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
At his request, Nathan meets up with his childhood friend Edgar, still living in his childhood home. Since then they have become dichotomous, incapable of conversing honestly, but their shared past still lurks in the back of their minds.
‘Dark tourism' has been defined as travel to places historically associated with death or tragedy. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, this industry is booming. Over 3600 people died during The Troubles (1968-1998), the colloquial name given to the 30 year period of violence and political dispute between Unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom and Nationalists who wanted to join the Republic of Ireland. A new phenomena of tourists now travel to the working class streets of the city where the majority of the conflict took place with long-term residents beginning to feel like they’re part of the attraction.
Official Selection Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020
2023 – A separatist movement has ignited civil war in the North of England. The UK government has built a wall dividing the country. Trapped in a refugee camp north of the border, a teenage girl must choose between loyalty to her father and her political ideology.
When a fun-loving, middle-aged single mum accidentally gets pregnant from a one-night-stand, her prim teenage daughter is scandalized. But mother and daughter slowly reverse roles as the pregnancy progresses.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Discovery - International premiere
A short documentary about living with HIV in conservative Northern Irish society. The film tells the story of actor and performer Matthew Cavan, aka Belfast’s most-loved drag artist, Cherrie Ontop. Diagnosed HIV-positive aged 19, Matthew struggled to find acceptance in conservative Northern Irish society. Coming from a religious family, Matthew was kicked out of his church by the Minister, and having never met anybody else with HIV, felt so alone he tried to commit suicide.
In a desperate attempt to escape his everyday reality and get back on stage, Matthew created his absolutely fabulous drag alter-ego Cherrie Ontop. A decade later, Cherrie is Belfast’s most-loved drag artist, and Matthew is a spokesperson for people living with HIV in Northern Ireland. However, as a result of being so open about his HIV status, Matthew has become a frequent target for homophobic trolling, threats and abuse.
BECOMING CHERRIE allows us inside the intimate process of transformation between Matthew and Cherrie. A portrait of resilience and reinvention, Matthew and his father Terry tell the story of the difficulties of living with HIV in the age of the DUP - set against the backdrop of the abuse Matthew has received; adapted into a terrifying stage performance!
A bowling alley, a gallery, a studio, a pregnancy and a pop song. Kathryn Elkin tackles, with her usual sense of humour, issues around labour, creation, biography, being an artist and the transforming pregnant body. QUEEN was conceived and shot during the artist’s pregnancy and first months of parenthood.
Official Selection Visions du Réel 2019 - International Competition - World premiere
A playwright risks his life in returning to his home city to find out if a woman with whom he once had a passionate and illicit affair ever truly loved him, only to learn that it was only ever the unknowing and distance that kept their desire alive.
