It says something about the cultural breadth of Galway Film Fleadh that guests to this 36th edition included both Kneecap, the incorrigible Belfast hip-hop posse, and, a month or two after her 80th birthday, the reliably warm Mary Robinson, seventh president of Ireland.
Mind you, the rappers and the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights do share an interest in world affairs.
Kneecap arrived for the Irish premiere of their self-titled fictionalised biopic – recipient of deserved raves at Sundance – in one of their trademark police Land Rovers. “We’re buzzing mostly for the first Irish audience to see the film and get all the little references that sailed over the Yanks’ heads!” they said as the film opened the fleadh. “And for an Irish-language film to have, no doubt, plenty of speakers in the room.” The trip proved worthwhile. Kneecap, which opens commercially at the start of next month, became the first film in the event’s history to take three main prizes. Rich Peppiatt’s rambunctious farce won the audience award, best Irish-language feature and best Irish film.
The former uachtarán na hÉireann made, as you might, expect an altogether less flamboyant appearance at the world premiere of Aoife Kelleher’s fine, respectful Mrs Robinson. The smoothly edited documentary, featuring an impressive amount of amateur film footage from before the time of home video, takes us from early days in Ballina to Trinity College Dublin to legal activism and on to the presidency. There are spirited contributions from the likes of Nell McCafferty, colleague in the women’s movement, who remembers Robinson as being “very polite ... saying, ‘Let’s go to court.’” But the dominant voice is Robinson’s own in an interview that admits to mistakes – notably leaving the presidency a few months early and missteps over the case of Princess Latifa from Dubai. Elsewhere, the films stands as a largely unqualified celebration. “I want young people and women in particular to fulfil their full potential,” Robinson, splendid in royal purple, said at the premiere.
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Marking the centre of the Irish cinematic year, the fleadh again welcomed guests from all corners. Tim Roth was there to talk through his busy career with the casting director Maureen Hughes during an actors’ masterclass. Brian Cox, recipient of the Galway Hooker award, was good value at a public interview with Kay Sheehy.
As ever there was a close focus on new Irish features, with an abundance of horror, documentary, experiment and Irish-language offerings. Among the latter, Anne McCabe’s Fidil Ghorm made attractive use of the home landscapes in a sentimental piece about a young fiddle player processing stress after her father’s car crash. The film skirts the recent genre that has grumpy elder characters – often Jim Broadbent – recapture youthful energies while on the run from overprotective carers. The great Barry McGovern appears as a growling fiddle great who, in a care home after heart trouble, meets the protagonist (Edith Lawlor, a gifted musician in real life) as she waits for dad to emerge from a coma. The unlikely two flee for a music competition in an endlessly civilised film, winner of best Irish first feature here, that allows itself no rough edges.
Also in the native tongue, we had the rough-hewn comedy Froggie from Luke and Jake Morgan. Seán T Ó Meallaigh and Gearoid Kavanagh turn up as a pair of brothers who, when still children, gain momentary fame on a TV event that is not, but looks suspiciously like, The Late Late Toy Show. Their act involves singing a drippy song with a (to them) giant ventriloquist’s dummy in the shape of a frog. Years later the team fall out when Froggie goes missing and turns up in a hostage video. It is a slightly ramshackle affair, but it brings undoubted charm to its heroes’ dodges and dives through contemporary Galway.
The nation continues to show strength in documentary storytelling. Among the best docs this year was Ciaran Cassidy’s Housewife of the Year. Hanging its narrative around the eponymous competition, already anachronistic by the time of its suspension in 1995, the film tackles the changes that struck Ireland as the millennium loomed. Featuring moving, intelligent contributions from former contestants – some of whom brought their sashes to the Town Hall premiere – Housewife of the Year reminds us how close we are to an already almost-unrecognisable Ireland. The tales of permanent pregnancy in times of economic hardship are chilling. The retrospective bafflement at their acceptance is moving. But there is also some grim humour to be derived from Gay Byrne’s face-slappingly patronising interviews. “Are you a women’s libber?” he asks in a vaguely accusatory fashion. Those weren’t the days. Housewife of the Year was a deserved winner of best Irish feature documentary.
This writer was charmed by Nick Kelly’s The Song Cycle. Winner of the best-independent-film award, the documentary follows the film-maker and musician, former lead singer of The Fat Lady Sings, as, in sight of his 60th birthday, he elects to cycle from Dublin to Glastonbury with his old chum Seán Millar for a hilariously humble slot at the annual music festival. Along the way we get a history of Fat Lady’s brush against breakout success and Kelly’s decision to throw it in for a less precarious career. We also learn a little about his loving – but not always connected – relationship with his father, the politician, lawyer and academic John Kelly. It is a small film but perfectly realised on its own terms. Kelly could hardly be more agreeable company.
Stephan Mazurek, experienced film professional, comes to Drogheda for a documentary on an inspiring individual. Tommy McCague, a little person, shook himself out of a psychological slump by turning to the world of powerlifting. Laoch: Defy the Odds was interrupted, as were so many recent docs, by the pandemic, and thrown a difficult curve ball when McCague was diagnosed with cancer. The film moves from competition to competition as our hero talks us through the complications of living in “a world that’s not adapted for you”. A fair bit of Laoch deals in talking heads, but McCague is charismatic enough to carry us with him. It’s an effective tribute to a man who, though assaulted on all sides, appears to ask no favours from anyone.
Mark O’Connor, director of Cardboard Gangsters and Between the Canals, returned to the Dublin underworld for a tough drama entitled Amongst the Wolves. Earlier films have nodded to Scorsese from less glamorous urban battlefields. The new piece, starring Luke McQuillan, Daniel Fee and Aidan Gillen in murmuring-villain mode, is closer to the Shane Meadows of Dead Man’s Shoes. McQuillan stars as an ex-soldier who, following a domestic disaster, finds himself homeless and adrift in a hostile Dublin. The film, shot in liquid shades by Ignas Laugalis, finds time to be forgiving of those struggling to assist the unhoused but ultimately gives in to a class of qualified nihilism. Another singular work from an important figure in recent Irish cinema.
Eva Birthistle, who has had a busy and buzzy career as an actor – most recently in Bad Sisters – breaks into feature directing with Kathleen Is Here, based on her earlier short, and duly picks up the Bingham Ray award for new talent. The film is a tense exercise in structured realism that allows Hazel Doupe another chance to shine. The Dubliner plays a young woman who forms an unhealthy attachment to a neighbour after being released to the family home from care. It’s a tense, often deliberately excruciating film that builds to a satisfactorily dramatic denouement. Kathleen Is Here is, however, at its best in the quiet moments between Doupe and Clare Dunne as her initially unsuspecting neighbour.
The fleadh’s prize for cinematography went to Damian McCarthy’s storming horror film Oddity. A hit at South by Southwest, in Texas, the picture stars Gwilym Lee as a doctor in a mental asylum deflecting the murder of his wife by (apparently) an escaped patient. Oddity seems entirely outside most schools of modern horror. It plays like a tale told to the receptively nervous around a holiday campfire. What if you were left alone in a remote house? What if an eccentric arrived to tell you there was a madman in the building? It has its share of gore, but it is also at home to the sort of cosy unease you got from British horror of the late 1960s and 1970s. McCarthy, director of the decent 2020 shocker Caveat, looks to be on a roll. Don’t get in his way.
Galway Film Fleadh 2024: All the awards from the 36th festival
Galway Hooker award: Brian Cox
For his contribution on the stage, the small screen and the big screen
Best international short animation: Lizzie and the Sea
Director-writer: Mariacarla Norall; producers: Maria Carolina Terzi, Lorenza Stella, Carlo Stella; lead animators: Ivana Verze, Viola Cecere
Best international short fiction: The Masterpiece
Director: Alex Lora; producers: Josemaria Martinez, Álex Lora Cercos, Néstor López, Lluis Quilez; writers: Lluis Quilez, Alfonso Amador
Best international short documentary: Friends on the Outside
Director-writer: Annabel Moodie; producer: Lea Luiz de Oliveira
Best first short animation with Brown Bag Films: Heading Home
Director-producer-writer: Holly Langan; lead animator: Holly Langan
James Flynn award for best first short drama: Wife of the Future
Director-writer: Rory Hanrahan; producer: Louise Byrne
Donal Gilligan award for best cinematography in a short film with the Irish Society of Cinematographers: All That’s Carried
Cinematographer: Albert Hooi; director: Rosie Barrett; producers: Laura Rigney, Eimear Reilly; writer: Eimear Reilly
Peripheral Visions award with Galway Cultural Company: Poison
Director: Désirée Nosbusch; producers: Alexandra Hoesdorff, Désirée Nosbusch, Petra Goedings, Maaike Benschop, Vivien Müller-Rommel; writer: Lot Vekemans
Generation jury award: Amal
Director: Jawad Rhalib; producers: Geneviève Lemal, Ellen de Waele; writers: Jawad Rhalib, David Lambert, Chloé Leonil
Best international film: The Teacher
Director-writer: Farah Nabulsi; producer: Sawsan Asfari Himani
Best international documentary: Intercepted
Director-writer: Oksana Karpovych; producers: Giacomo Nudi, Rocío B Fuentes, Pauline Tran Van Lieu, Lucie Rego, Darya Bassel, Olha Beskhmelnytsina
Best cinematography in an Irish film with Teach Solais: Oddity
Cinematographer: Colm Hogan
Best marketplace project with Bankside Films: Fairies Don’t Exist
Michael O’Neill and Jude Sharvin, Armchair & Rocket
Bingham Ray new talent award with Magnolia Pictures: Eva Birthistle
For her directorial debut, Kathleen Is Here
Best Irish-language feature film: Kneecap
Director-writer: Rich Peppiatt; producers: Trevor Birney, Jack Tarling, Patrick O’Neill
Pitching award with Wild Atlantic Pictures: Dons Life Goes On: Zoe Gibney
James Horgan award for best animation with Animation Ireland: To Break a Circle
Director: Kalia Firester; producers: Tim Bryans, Andrea McQuade, Lee McQuade; writers: Kalia Firester, Dara McWade; lead animator: Cora McKenna
Best independent film: The Song Cycle
Director-writer-producer: Nick Kelly
Best short documentary with TG4: Jointly won by We Beg to Differ and After the Bomb
We Beg to Differ – director-writer: Ruairi Bradley; producers: Thomas Purdy, Ruairi Bradley
After the Bomb – director-writer-producer: Heather Brumley
Tiernan McBride award for best short drama: Turnaround
Director-writer Aisling Byrne; producer: Killian Coyle
Best Irish feature documentary: Housewife of the Year
Director: Ciaran Cassidy; producers: Maria Horgan, Colum McKeown
Best Irish first feature with Element Pictures: Fidil Ghorm
Director: Anne McCabe; producers: Pierce Boyce, Bríd Seoighe; writer: Patricia Forde
Best Irish film with Danu Media: Kneecap
Director-writer: Rich Peppiatt; producers: Trevor Birney, Jack Tarling, Patrick O’Neill
Audience award: Kneecap
Director-writer: Rich Peppiatt; producers: Trevor Birney, Jack Tarling, Patrick O’Neill
