Weekend of screenings for the Wexford Film Festival
PREPARATIONS are under way for the third annual Wexford Film Festival taking place in the town during the August bank holiday weekend.
Run by filmmaking brothers Dave and Karl McGlone, the festival received submissions from all over the world in every genre and a diverse selection was made for this year’s programme, including three short films with Wexford involvement and a film featuring the Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan among the cast.
Screenings will take place nightly in Wexford Arts Centre from 7.30pm to 10.30 pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, August 3, 4 and 5. Tickets cost €10 for the weekend and are available from the Arts Centre.
Awards will be presented for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay with over €2,000 worth of film-making equipment on offer as prizes. Talks will be given by visiting film-makers from Ireland and the UK.
Among the Wexford selections is A Momentary Lapse, a short film by Philip Bertrand Cullen from Wexford, portraying the weakness of the human condition when faced with a life-changing episode.
A Light in the Darkness is a documentary directed by Wexfordman Shane Campbell about a local community’s response to the growing number of suicides in a harbour town.
Chips and Kissin’ is a short film directed by Martin Twomey and starring young Wexford actress Aislinn who co-wrote the screenplay with John Delaney who is also in the cast, about a man who tries to rebuild his relationship with his daughter following the suicide of her mother.
Jim Sheridan produced and appears in Shelter Me, a documentary directed by Zahara Mourid about a group of housing activists and celebrities who took the law into their hands hands by breaking into an empty Government building Apollo House in Dublin city centre, in protest at the homeless crisis. The cast also includes Glen Hansard, Hozier and Brendan Ogle.
Among the entries from outside Ireland are Drawing Home, a romantic feature film by Markus Rupprecht, set in 1920’s Boston, starrying Juan Riedinger (Narcos), Kate Mulgrew (Orange is the New Black) and Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner and Batman) and Detainment, a short film by Vincent Lambe about two ten-year olds who are detained by police on suspicion of abducting and murdering a toddler -a true story based on interview transcripts and records from the Jamie Bulger case which shocked the world in 1993.
There are many interesting short films in the festival catalogue, which due to their brief running times will allow the audience to view a wide range of different offerings from filmmakers during the course of the weekend.