Irish Film at Berlinale and EFM 2020
Posted: 13th February 2020
The 2020 Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) runs from 20 February – 1 March, with Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland attending the festival and hosting the Irish stand at the European Film Market (EFM).
Stand Information
Join the Irish film industry at Berlinale and EFM 2020, at stand G7 (upstairs on the balcony) in the Martin-Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin.
If you are a member of the Irish delegation and wish to book a meeting at the stand, please email marketing@screenireland.ie.
- For information on filming in Ireland, our locations brochure is available for download here.
- To find out about the Irish tax credit, Section 481, click here.
- You can find more information about official European co-production here.
Official Selection at Berlinale
Irish/Canadian co-production My Salinger Year will receive its World Premiere on Thursday, 20th February 2020 at 19:30 the Berlinale Film Festival.
- Thur 20 Feb, 19:30, Berlinale Palast (World Premiere)
- Thur 20 Feb, 20:30, Friedrichstadt-Palast
- Fri 21 Feb, 10:30, Friedrichstadt-Palast
- Fri 21 Feb, 21:30, Haus der Berliner Festspiele
New York in the 1990s: after leaving graduate school to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, Joanna gets hired as an assistant to Margaret, the stoic and oldfashioned literary agent of J. D. Salinger. Fluctuating between poverty and glamour, she spends her days in a plush, woodpanelled office — where dictaphones and typewriters still reign and agents doze off after three-martini lunches — and her nights in a sink-less Brooklyn apartment with her socialist boyfriend.
Joanna’s main task is processing Salinger’s voluminous fan mail, but as she reads the heart-wrenching letters from around the world, she becomes reluctant to send the agency’s impersonal standard letter and impulsively begins personalizing the responses. The results are both humorous and moving, as Joanna, while using the great writer’s voice, begins to discover her own.
- Irish Production Company Parallel Films
- Sales Agent Memento Films
Screening at EFM
My Salinger Year
- Fri 21 Feb, 10:25, CinemaxX 9
- Thur 27 Feb, 11:45, CinemaxX 2
- Director Philippe Falardeau
- Production Company Parallel Films
- Sales Agent Memento Films International
Here Are The Young Men
Matthew, a troubled teenager on the cusp of adulthood, finishes school along with the menacing Kearney and nihilistic Rez. In a final summer of excess, Matthew falls in love with his childhood sweetheart Jen, but is dragged into shocking acts of transgression by the increasingly psychopathic Kearney.
- Sat 22 Feb, 09:00, CinemaxX 11
- Director Eoin Macken
- Production Company Hail Mary pictures
- Sales Agent Arclight Films
The Castle
This coming of age story follows Monika, a thirteen-year old Lithuanian girl, a few weeks after she arrives in Dublin with her mother and grandmother. Monika dreams of becoming a famous musician. After she and her mother play at a funeral, they are invited by a mysterious older music impresario to play at ’The Castle’, but her mother is a realist and instead sells their keyboard. Monika is left to resort to desperate measures in order to raise the money to hire ‘her’ keyboard back and take her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make her dreams come true.
- Sat 22 Feb, 14:10, CinemaxX 18
- Director Lina Luzyte
- Production Company Samson Films
- Sales Agent Wide Management
I Never Cry
When Ola’s father dies on a building site in Ireland, she must travel there to bring his remains back to Poland. Having a complicated relationship with her father and resenting him for not being there for his family, his presence in recent years had been limited to sending regular paychecks. Money is the only thing that connected him to Ola, with the promise to buy a car for her eighteenth birthday. Dealing with foreign bureaucracy and her father’s acquaintances in her own street-smart way, Ola learns her biggest dream wasn’t a car, but getting to know who her father really was.
- Sun 23 Feb, 17:10, CinemaxX 14
- Director Jak Najdalej Stad
- Production Company MK1 Productions
- Sales Agent Wide Management