20/03/2015 - Opening is the romantic comedy Poison Pen, the thriller An Bronntanas by Tom Collins and Song of the Sea, 2015 Oscar nominee. Guest of honour is Lenny Abrahamson

Poison Pen by Steven Benedict, Lorna Fitzsimons and Jennifer Shortall

IrishFilmFesta returns to Rome from 26-29 March 2015: the festival dedicated to Irish film this year marks its eighth edition and will take place as usual at the Casa del Cinema.

Also featuring among the films in the line-up is the multi-award-winning drama Patrick's Day [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Terry McMahon, among the festival guests, starring Moe Dunford as a 26-year-old schizophrenic who experiences love for the first time; and the comedy Gold [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Niall Heery with James Nesbitt, David Wilmot, Kerry Condon and Maisie Williams, about a man who returns home after years and finds that all of the family dynamics have changed.

Guest of honour will be Lenny Abrahamson, one of the festival’s most popular directors. During previous editions plans were made to create a complete filmography about him. This year we will see his latest movie, Frank [+see also:
trailer
film profile], with Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and his debut feature, Adam & Paul, which in 2004 unveiled the talent of and marked the birth of new Irish cinema. The director will land at the Casa del Cinema also with a master class open to the public.

Documentary film is represented in this edition by three documentaries, all filmed in 2014: A City Dreaming by Mark McCauley, dedicated to the city of Derry and entrusted to the narrative voice of the popular filmmaker and TV and radio presenter from Northern Ireland Gerry Anderson, passed away last year; Brendan Behan – The Roaring Boy by Maurice Sweeney, in which actor Adrian Dunbar (who is also expected in Rome), who played Behan many times in theatre, starts travelling to visit all of the cities in which the writer lived and where he is still much loved; Ballymurphy by Sean Murray, about the massacre carried out in Belfast by the British army in the summer of 1971.

Set in the same year, '71 [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Yann Demange
film profile] by Yann Demange, is a film in which English recruit Gary (Jack O'Donnell), on military service in bloody Belfast, finds himself all of a sudden alone between enemy lines. An entirely different genre is Poison Pen, the romantic comedy directed by Steven Benedict, Lorna Fitzsimons and Jennifer Shortall, and produced by the Dublin non-profit centre Filmbase, born in 1986 to support young filmmakers. The line-up is completed by Song of the Sea [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tomm Moore
film profile], the animation film by Tomm Moore (previously co-director with Nora Twomey for The Secret of Kells [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Didier Brunner
interview: Tomm Moore
interview: Viviane Vanfleteren
film profile], screened at the IrishFilmFesta 2010) which received a 2015 Oscar nomination. 

The competition section created in 2010 and reserved for shorts will offer fifteen works, divided amongst live action and animation. There are also plans for a special section dedicated to the Irish language, a Gaelic Focus that will screen An Bronntanas [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (The Gift), the thriller directed by Tom Collins set in Connemara, and the short in competition Rúbaí by Louise Ni Fhiannachta, both Irish-language works.

IrishFilmFesta, created and directed by Susanna Pellis, is produced by the cultural association Archimedia and carried out in collaboration with the Irish Film Institute; with the support of Culture Ireland, the Irish Film Board, Turismo Irlandese, Irish Design 2015; and sponsored by the Irish Embassy in Italy.

(Translated from Italian)