Watch: Discover Irish Stories on Screen Coming Soon to VMDIFF and beyond
Posted: 27th February 2020
Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland is delighted to present a new trailer showcasing the powerful, emotive range of Irish stories coming soon to the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival and beyond.
Irish audiences can discover powerful new stories from filmmakers: from the Irish-language famine thriller Arracht by director Tom O'Sullivan, to Neasa Hardiman's sea monster horror Sea Fever to Phyllida Lloyd's Herself, all playing at the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival this February/March, and being released in Irish cinemas over the next few months.
For more details on the films showcased in the trailer, see below:
Calm With Horses - In Cinemas 13th March
In darkest rural Ireland, ex-boxer Douglas ’Arm’ Armstrong has become the feared enforcer for the drug-dealing Devers family, whilst also trying to be a good father to his autistic five-year-old son, Jack. Torn between these two families, Arm’s loyalties are truly tested when he is asked to kill for the first time.
Vivarium - In Cinemas 27th March
House hunters Gemma and Tom find themselves trapped in the empty cryptic maze of a vast housing development. No matter what corners they turn, they find themselves back where they started. All attempts to escape are futile, so they are forced to take up residence in a sick simulacrum of suburban living. Are Gemma and Tom the subjects of some bizarre experiment? The mockery of family living is stretched to breaking point and the chain of events that follows reveals the horrific truth beneath the Vivarium.
Arracht - In Cinemas 3rd April
Accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Coleman Sharkey has to abandon his family and flee to a remote island. When the famine engulfs his community and takes his wife and child, he is left with nothing but a solitary life. Coleman evades the law and fights starvation until he meets a girl named Kitty who helps him find a reason to live.
Cuirtear coir i leith Coleman Sharkey, coir nach ndearna sé, agus caithfidh sé a theaghlach a thréigean agus cur faoi ar oileáinín iargúlta. Déanann an gorta slad ar an bpobal, sciobann uaidh a bhean agus a pháiste agus níl aige sa saol ach an t-uaigneas agus é ar a theitheadh ó fhórsaí an dlí, ag iarraidh gan bás a fháil den ocras. Buaileann sé le cailín darb ainm Cití a thugann cúis dó a bheith beo.
A Girl From Mogadishu - In Cinemas 3rd April
Born into a refugee camp in war-torn Somalia, Ifrah Ahmed was trafficked to Ireland as a teenager and turned the testimony of her traumatic childhood experiences of FGM/C into a force for good emerging as one of the world’s most foremost award-winning international activists against GBV.
Sea Fever - In Cinemas 24th April
Solitary marine biology student Siobhán endures a week on a ragged fishing trawler, where she's miserably at odds with the close-knit crew. But out in the deep Atlantic, an unfathomable life form ensnares the boat. When members of the crew start succumbing to a strange infection, Siobhán must overcome her alienation and win the crew's trust, before everyone is lost.
Rialto - In Cinemas 8th May
Colm is in his mid-forties, married, with two teenage children. Still grieving the death of his father, a destructive figure in his life, Colm struggles with his relationship to his own son. At work, a recent takeover threatens his job and unable to share his vulnerability with his wife, Colm’s world is falling apart around him. In the midst of this crisis, Colm solicits sex from a young man called Jay. This
encounter and his growing infatuation has a deep effect on Colm. He finds a comfort in Jay that no one else can provide.
Rose Plays Julie - In Cinemas 15th May
Rose Plays Julie is the story of a young woman searching for her biological mother. Set against a backdrop of misogyny, revenge and longing, Rose undertakes a journey that leads her to revelations that are both devastating and dangerous.
Breaking Out - In Cinemas 15th May
Suffering all his life from muscular dystrophy, Irish musician Fergus O’Farrell found his release through music and his ever-changing band of musicians. Filmed over a decade, charting his first tour to the Czech Republic, to Radio City Music Hall and to his last days of recording his final album at his home in West Cork, Breaking Out is a love story about music, family and friendship.
Broken Law - Coming Soon
Dave Connolly is a respected member of the Garda Síochána, but following a botched robbery, his loyalty to the law is tested by his ex-convict brother Joe. Dave suddenly finds himself embroiled in a cover-up that somehow leads to a secret relationship with Amia, an unhappily married woman who also happens to be the victim of his brother’s crime.
Normal People - Coming Soon
At school, Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular, while she’s a loner. But when Connell collects his mother from her job at Marianne’s house, a strange, indelible connection grows — one they are determined to conceal. Later, while they’re both studying at the same university, they circle one another, straying toward other people but always magnetically drawn back together. As Marianne veers into selfdestruction and Connell begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
Herself - Coming Soon
On the surface, Sandra is a young mother struggling to provide her two young daughters with a warm, safe and happy home to grow up in. Beneath the surface, she has a steely determination to change their lives for the better, and when it becomes clear that there are no other options left, she decides to build it herself from scratch. With very little income to speak of and no savings, Sandra must use all her ingenuity to make her ambitious friends support her and lend a helping hand. At the same time, she must escape the grip of her possessive ex-partner and keep him away from her and her girls. The lionhearted Sandra draws together a community of young daughters that help rebuild her own strength and sense of self.
Jihad Jane - Released 14th February
In March 2010, the arrest on terror charges of a blonde haired, blue-eyed, American woman who called herself ‘Jihad Jane’ made headlines world wide and was described as the 'new front in the war on terrorism.' The story of Coleen LaRose, a forty six-year-old woman, who had radicalised in rural Pennsylvania led the evening news bulletins. What made the case more surreal and confusing was the arrest of another American woman, Jamie Paulin Ramirez, a Colorado native — this time in Waterford, Ireland. One American woman caught up in a terror cell based out Ireland seemed incredible but two. Amid a backdrop of NSA surveillance, media hysteria and online radicalization — ‘Jihad Jane’ is the never before told story of marriage proposals, a murder plot and the world’s most unlikeliest terror cell.
When All Is Ruin Once Again - Released 21st February
At the beginning of the Anthropocenen Epoch, a rural community carve out their lives while a motorway ploughs forth through their landscape. It goes no further than the town of Gort in the west of Ireland, halted by the dawn of a financial crisis. In this poetic documentary-essay, a myriad of personalities weave an epic tapestry through the bog lands, farms, fire-sides, race tracks and hurling pitches of recession Ireland. “We might all need to be remembered some day” says a storyteller by a lake, as he defines the importance of folk tales living on in collective memory, long after the death of the protagonist. Also attesting to the impermanence of our existence; whatever we do, say or make during our lives, will eventually be forgotten while nature will reclaim all evidence of our civilisations