During the First Cut! Youth Film Festival in April 2021, of which Cork International Film Festival was a proud Digital Partner, we were delighted to present the CIFF award for Best First Cut! Film 2021 to Ian Fallon for his film, ‘Last Letter’. His short film will screen as part of the Irish Shorts 4 Programme at CIFF2021 at 1pm on Friday, 12th November at the Gate Cinemas, Cork.
The following is a statement from the director about the experience of making this film in the difficult circumstances of the first COVID-19 lockdown.
“‘Last Letter’ was a film I made all by myself in the first few weeks of quarantine in March 2020 for a college brief titled “The Personal Project”. Suitably, it’s an extremely personal piece and acts as the final entry in an epistolary diary I kept up, and poured my heart into, over the span of three years. It was something I needed to make, both to denote the importance that that diary played in those three years and give it the send-off it deserved, but also as a lesson for myself to let go and not hold on to the past with such a tight grip.
Winning the CIFF Award for Best First Cut! Film was a completely unexpected but really lovely surprise, and a great encouragement to continue making personal films. It was my first time ever winning an award for a film, so it felt even more special that it was such a personal and intimate film as ‘Last Letter’.”
