Focus on Ireland
7 films
Don't Forget to Remember
dir. Ross Killeen
dok2024
A hopeful and reflective story about closeness, passing, change and the role of art that extends beyond galleries. A popular street art artist, Asbestos, faces the slow passing of his mum, who has Alzheimer’s disease. Using his art, he takes to the streets of Dublin to talk about memory.
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Housewife of the Year
dir. Ciaran Cassidy
dok2024
A warm dinner on the table, a tidy house, children who have been looked after and a content husband. Behind this ideal, traditional image of the Irish household, there were sometimes exhausted and lonely women. The national competition for the ‘Housewife of the Year’, a television show that was broadcast between 1969 and 1995, offered them an opportunity to get out of the house.
Read moreI Dream in Photos
dir. Gary Lennon
dok
Pulitzer Prize winner and photojournalist Cathal McNaughton decides to leave his dream profession at the peak of his career. Returning from war zones to live in a cottage in the Irish countryside is not easy for him. He finally has time to rebuild the relationship with his adolescent son and take care of his parents, but the memories of his past still haunt him.
Read moreMy Lost Russian Mother
dir. Sam Jones
dok2023
The Irish director tells a story of siblings who have been adopted by an American family. Gabe decides to travel to Russia, where he hopes to find his biological mother. Meeting her turns out to be a painful experience. The story of the man and his disillusionment with his Russian family has also a dark, unexpected finale.
Read moreNotes from Sheepland
dir. Cara Holmes
dok2023
The film’s protagonist combines, with some difficulty, her artistic career with sheep farming she took up when she inherited the family farm. She is a committed breeder that proudly wears lipstick but juxtaposes it with the work overalls in which she takes her animals to graze in the field. She eludes the gender stereotypes that have been attributed to Irish women over the years.
Read morePray for Our Sinners
dir. Sinead O'Shead
dok
Sinead O’Shea, an Irish film director and journalist, returns to her hometown, Navan, to expose the abuse that took place in Catholic institutions there. In her confrontational documentary, she talks to people who experienced bullying and cruelty from teachers and nuns in the 1960s and 1970s.
Read moreThe Graceless Age
dir. Sarah Share
dok2023
John Murry, an adopted relative of Nobel laureate William Faulkner and, above all, an alienated and troubled musician from the American South, travels to the Irish coast to find solace. The director accompanies him throughout his return to the past and in his symbolic attempt at renewal.
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