Rachel Griffiths stars in the latest big movie in an incredible year for Irish cinema
IT’S BEEN a big year for Irish cinema on the world stage. After viewing Brooklyn in Sundance 2015 critics were running for their laptops while the word on Room was scorching hot from the moment Lenny Abrahamson’s eventual Oscar nominee premiered in Telluride later in September. Paddy Breathnach’s Viva would join Room in Toronto, and at the dawn of the new year, John Carney’s Sing Street and Rebecca Daly’s Mammal would bring the Irish renaissance full circle as both films world premiered in Sundance 2016.
Room scribe Emma Donoghue aside, Daly is the only woman filmmaker of the bunch. Though she says her gender has never been a drawback. “My work has always been supported by the Irish Film Board, which is fantastic,” says the Dublin writer-director whose debut 2011 film The Other Side of Sleep had premiered in Cannes Directors Fortnight. “I’ve never felt any kind of issue there. There’s been the ‘Waking The Feminists’ movement to do with the under-representation of Irish women in theatre and I think that this also is an issue in film. Though I haven’t personally felt that.”
