Projects in genres: Northern Irish

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

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

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. Official Selection Galway Film Fleadh 2008 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

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.

Synopsis

A masterclass of minimalist expressionism by a class master. Dave Heron provides 33 classic expressions as a unique guide for all budding actors, two faced gits and prospective brazen liars. 'Dave taught me everything I know about acting' - L. Olivier.

Synopsis

Two hitmen, the younger, Ray, the older, Ken, are sent to hide out in the strange Gothic, medieval town of Bruges, Belgium, after a hit they were involved with in London went wrong; hired to execute a Catholic priest, Ray also accidentally killed a seven-year-old boy outside a confessional. While awaiting instructions from their boss, the volatile Harry Waters, who ordered the priest's killing for reasons only he knows, Ray attempts to deal with his darkness and despair over the death of the boy in this town that he can't bear, while Ken, who adores the place, tries to help his friend the best he can. Ray meets a beautiful girl. Things start looking up. Ken gets the order from Harry to execute Ray. Things start looking down. Romance and violence ensues. Honour and dramatic reversals abound. There will be dwarves and there will be drugs, and the dark, cobbled streets of this oddball town will be riven with blood and the retort of gunfire and the sickening screams of the guilty and the innocent.  Few will get out of Bruges alive.  

Synopsis

A universal story of disenfranchisement and search for identity. In the mid 1970s, a group of six young men left their homes in the West of Ireland, took the boat out of Dublin Bay and sailed across the sea to England in the hope of making their fortunes and returning home. Thirty years later only one, Jackie Flavin, makes it home - but does so in a coffin. Jackie's five friends reunite at his wake where they are forced face up to the reality of their alienation as long term emigrants who no longer have any real place to call home.   Directors Guild of America / Directors Guild of Ireland Award to Tom Collins. Kings winner of Five Irish Film And Television Awards, including Special Irish Language Award. Kings winner of Kodak Best Cinematography at Hamptons Film Festival.