Dramas, shorts, documentaries: Ten to see at Cork International Film Festival
Cork International Film Festival.
The Cork International Film Festival begins on Friday, November 5, with a week of live screenings, followed by a nine-day digital programme from Saturday 13th, where many of the participating films can be watched from home.
Here's just a selection of 10 of the offerings on the programme:
The festival's opening film has a bit of a Ken Loach flavour with its tale of an inter-racial relationship in Bradford. Among its stars, Adeel Akhtar will probably be most familiar from numerous other British films and TV shows. The film has already been garnering decent reviews.
An Irish-language drama based around characters created by Donal Ryan in his novel, The Thing About December. The title translates as 'Shelter', and it follows a 28-year-old recluse who has to engage more with the world when his parents pass away.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney will be at the Everyman to introduce this documentary on Lyra McKee, the 29-year-old journalist shot dead in Derry in 2019.
Acclaimed Cork documentary-maker Pat Collins focused his cameras on the equally renowned Kery-based choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan as he worked on MÁM, a show that involved 12 dancers, concertina player Cormac Begley and an orchestral collective.
A winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year, this body horror split critics somewhat, but still took the prize at the French festival for its heady mix of sex and violence.
Alan Gilsenan looks at the life of the Irish politician most famous for his work fighting TB, and his clash with the Catholic Church over health care.
Not due for a general release until early next year, this is an early chance to see Jessica Chastain star as the real-life televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker.
Part of 'Female Visions', the festival's retrospective strand on women filmmakers, this screening offers a rare chance for a big-screen look at the masterful tale from 1999 about the French Foreign Legion and love in the deserts of Djibouti.
Cork sibling composers Irene and Linda Buckley have composed a new score for Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic, Metropolis, which will be played live at screenings at the Everyman.
The Cork festival has long had a reputation for strong programmes of the short form, with the winners of several categories qualifying for the Academy Awards longlist. For screenings, they're usually bundled into groups of six to eight, under headings such as family-friendly, Cork, Irish and International. Often the work of emerging filmmakers, these shorter films are also a great way of checking out the next generation of talent.
- Cork International Film Festival runs November 5-21. www.corkfilmfest.org
