Irish shorts Bye, Bye Now and If These Walls Could Talk Pick Up Awards at IFI Stranger Than Fiction
The Irish short documentaries Bye, Bye Now and If These Walls Could Talk both picked up awards at the 9th IFI Stranger Than Fiction Festival in Dublin over the weekend.
Bye, Bye Now, which was co-directed by Ross Whitaker and Aideen O'Sullivan, scooped up the Audience Award while Anna Rodger's If These Walls Could Talk was awarded the Best Short at the festival.
Bye, Bye Now follows the planned removal of a number of phoneboxes from around the country, evoking fond memories in the lives of the rural Irish communities through the use of interviews and footage.
The film was also co-produced by Whitaker and O'Sullivan for True Films and was recently officially selected for competition at the Krakow Film Festival in Poland.
If These Walls Could Talk, takes a look at psychiatric institutions as they approach their demise, questioning the faint traces of forgotten voices of the people who spent the best part of their lives committed to these asylums.
This moving documentary was produced by Siobhán Ward for Yellow Asylum Films and made its premiere at last years Corona Cork Film Festival.
Both films were financed through Reality Bites, the IFB short documentary scheme.
There was a strong mix of both Irish and international documentaries to screen at the festival, including the successful world premiere of the IFB funded Pyjama Girls, which was directed by Maya Derrington. Produced by Nicky Gogan for Still Films, the film sold out all three of its screenings.
Other Irish projects in the programme were Broken Tail, A Prayer For The Wind Horse and Horses. Many of the screenings were completely sold out over the course of the weekend, with thousands of people in attendance, resulting in a 23% increase in box office income compared to the festival in 2009.
The IFI Stranger Than Fiction Film Festival took place from April 15-18th.