The 68th Cork International Film Festival kicks off tomorrow!
It’s almost here: over the next 18 days, immerse yourself in the latest and best Irish and international features, documentaries, and shorts, screening at venues throughout Cork City and County.
We’ll keep you updated with daily highlights throughout the Festival, including spotlighting film gems in our ‘Discovery Choice’, so you can see it first in Cork with CIFF. Explore some our opening weekend films and events below.
All Festival tickets and passes (including our 5 and 10 Film Cinema Passes) are on sale now at corkfilmfest.org and via the myCIFF app.
OPENING WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS: SPECIAL GUESTS
Brave the Dark
Based on a true story, Brave the Dark powerfully portrays the transformation of a 1980s small-town teacher as he is drawn into the mysterious past of a student suddenly arrested outside his classroom. Long sustained by a quiet belief that no student is a lost cause, Stan Deen (Jared Harris (Chernobyl, Mad Men)) discovers the profound and direct impact he can have on another life. (3pm, Sat 11th Nov, The Everyman)
Director Damian Harris, and actors Jared and Jamie Harris (sons of renowned actor Richard Harris) and Nathaniel Deen (on whom the film is based) will be in attendance.
So This is Christmas
From award-winning director Ken Wardrop, So This is Christmas illuminates the challenges often unseen beyond the toys, trees and tinsel, characters in a small Irish village reflect on their difficult relationships with Christmas. (8pm, Fri 10th Nov, The Everyman)
Venom Films, the team behind So This is Christmas, will be in attendance at this screening and will also participate in Doc Day on Friday 24 November as part of our Industry Events.
In competition for CIFF Best New Irish Feature Award, supported by the Irish Examiner.
OPENING WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS: SHORT FILM PROGRAMMES
Family-Friendly Shorts:
We are delighted to present fun short films for tots to early teens, including the animated version of Bono and Gavin Friday’s Peter & the Wolf book project, made in association with the Irish Hospice Foundation in our ‘Family-Friendly Shorts’ programme. (1pm, Sat 11th Nov, The Everyman)
Our Irish Shorts 1 programme (2.30pm, Sat 11th Nov, Triskel) bears the promise of an eclectic mix, combining absurdist humour, psycho-sexual horror and small town ennui, while also taking you around the world and back.
The Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland programme premieres an exciting, moving and inspirational selection of new Irish short films funded under the Focus and Real Short film schemes. (6pm, Sat 11th Nov, The Everyman)
Our Irish Shorts 3 category, Pure Cork (12.45pm, Sun 12th Nov, The Everyman) showcases a collection of eight new works from Cork filmmakers. Playful, experimental and just downright celebratory – in a word, Cork!
The Best Cork Short Award is sponsored by
DISCOVERY CHOICE: THE GULLSPÅNG MIRACLE
In this stranger then fiction International Documentary, Kari and May, two devout Christian sisters from Norway, experience a “divine sign” whilst looking at apartments, which encourages them to purchase it. On meeting the seller, Olaug, they are shocked to discover that she looks identical to their older sister, who committed suicide some 30 years earlier.
As further coincidences surface, the sisters recruit director Maria Fredriksson to document the revelations, but this is only the beginning of a bizarre and eerie tale where truth is definitely stranger than fiction. (10.30am, Sat 11th Nov, The Everyman.
OPENING WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS: PARALLAX EMERGING FILM ARTIST EXHIBITION
A solo exhibition by Myfanwy Frost-Jones, inaugural recipient of the Parallax Emerging Film Artist Award, a new bursary award established by CIFF, National Sculpture Factory, and Sample-Studios, Cork in 2022.
A graduate of MTU Crawford College of Art and Design, Myfanwy is a multidisciplinary artist, specialising in photography, video, installation, and sculpture. Another Country is an installation working with the wealth of archival cine film, photographs, slides and correspondence left by her grandparents from their years in Uganda as a way to rethink the past in the present.
Opening Reception: 5pm, Fri 10th Nov, Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, Fitzgerald Park.
Read more about Myfanwy’s work and the exhibition in this Irish Examiner interview.
WIN: BRUNCH & JAZZ
Competition time! This Sunday 12th we’re joining forces with Paperboys Cafe & Garden at the Triskel so you and a lucky pal can enjoy a delicious brunch with coffee/tea. You’ll be able to keep the good times rollin’ with a pair of tickets to Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, a fascinating insight into the life of Max Roach, legendary jazz drummer, composer, political activist and educator. (Brunch served from 11am, film starts at 1.15pm, Triskel).
Submit your name and email before 5pm this Friday 10th to be in with a chance to win this jazzy prize.
