Grabbers, Shadow Dancer to bookend Galway

by Naman Ramachandran

03/07/2012 - The 2012 edition of the Galway Film Fleadh (July 10-15) will kick off with Jon Wright’s Grabbers [trailer] and close with James Marsh’s Shadow Dancer [trailer]. This year, the festival pays tribute to Isabelle Huppert with a mini retrospective including Heaven’s Gate, Madame Bovary, The Piano Teacher and White Material [trailer]. Huppert will be present for a public interview.

The festival will also have a strand dedicated to Danish film, and the 14-film selection includes Mads Matthiesen’s Teddy Bear [trailer], Lise Birk Pedersen’s Putin’s Kiss and Christoffer Boe’s Beast [trailer]. The festival also sees the world premiere of Phil Harrison’s The Good Man.

Festival Programmer Gar O’Brien said, “This year is without doubt a banner year for Irish film and alongside the usual mix of the best in world cinema and documentaries, the Galway Film Fleadh is proud to host an unprecedented number of new Irish films, including 13 world premieres, seven European premieres and seven Irish premieres. Between the opening film Grabbers, a wonderfully comedic Irish take on the monster genre, and the closing film Shadow Dancer, a tense thriller about a mother’s divided loyalties during the Troubles, this year’s fleadh showcases the best that cinema has to offer – all blended through a uniquely Irish sensibility.”