Galway Film Fleadh 2026

A thrilling and stylish debut from writer-director Peter Young. Featuring a uniformly excellent young Irish cast, Our House is a tense family thriller with a sharp edge of desperation. Tensions arise after recovering addict Nathan (Michael Shea) arrives late for his mother's wake. He and his older siblings, Thomas (Andy Doherty) and Patricia (Hannah Maclean), quickly remember why they don't see each other much anymore. Chaos erupts when they discover their mother has split the family home between them, rather than fulfilling her promise to leave it entirely to Thomas. The siblings spend the wake bickering, scheming, and coming to blows, resulting in Nathan relapsing. When he wakes to a room full of exhaust fumes, it becomes clear that someone in the family is prepared to kill for the house they feel is rightfully theirs.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Peter Young
Writer: Peter Young
Producer: Callum Harrison
Cast: Michael Shea, Hannah McClean, Andy Doherty, Colin Connor, Kerri Quinn, Carol Moore, Paddy Jenkins

Rooted in the communities, landscapes, and traditions of the west of Ireland, this collection highlights the region's vibrant filmmaking scene. Diverse in style and subject, these films offer a unique perspective on life along Ireland's Atlantic edge.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

A stunning science-fiction epic, The Fin takes place in a post-war and ecologically devastated Korea, where mutated outcasts called Omegas are exploited as cheap labour. Sujin, a young government worker, begins to doubt the state's ideology as she pursues Mia, an Omega in hiding. An experimental, visually arresting film, with an otherworldly score, which gives us something to root for between Sujin and Mia, while interrogating the horrors of authoritarian dystopia. 

Director: Syeyoung Park
Writer: Syeyoung Park
Producers: Heejung Oh, Philippe Bober, Syeyoung Park

This selection explores characters confronting their pasts, their shifting realities, and the fractured bonds that tie them to the world, across a diverse spectrum of genres.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Rooted in joy and creativity, Comparsa is a powerful documentary about sisterhood, healing, and the transformative power of art. After 41 girls are killed in a state-run "safe home" and the government fails to act, sisters Lesli and Lupe organise a comparsa – an exuberant street performance with giant puppets, fire-breathing stilt walkers and drums. Through courageous personal testimony and community care, their youth movement takes to the streets, challenging corruption, and reclaiming public space for women and girls.

Directors: Vickie Curtis, Doug Anderson
Writers: Vickie Curtis, Lesli Canela Pérez, Lupe Pérez, Anna Hadingham
Producers: Anna Hadingham, Olivia Ahnemann
Cast: Lesli Canela Pérez, Lupe Pérez, Marta Chicoj García

To This I Belong is a documentary following the creation of an ambitious, island-wide dance project in which four dance artists – one in each province of Ireland – are commissioned by Luail, Ireland's new all-island dance company, to make site-specific works rooted in land, memory, and belonging. Through movement, music, and place, the film portrays an island in flux – asking how a country tells its story through the bodies that move across its land.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Nicky Larkin
Producer: Nicky Larkin

Murphy Vs Christmas is a darkly satirical yet heartfelt drama set in contemporary Dublin. When avant-garde artist Eoin Murphy tells his six-year-old daughter that Santa Claus isn't real, her distress sparks controversy. Outraged by a teacher's attempt to preserve the myth, Eoin launches a public campaign, triggering backlash and a failed court battle that leaves him facing prison. As his crusade isolates him from family and society, he is forced to question whether truth alone is enough.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Alex Fegan
Writer: Alex Fegan
Producers: Alex Fegan, Johnny Elliott, John Connors
Cast: Johnny Elliott, John Connors, Tania Notaro, Fernanda Bastos, Maisy Crowley

Zamo Mkhwanazi's vibrant Laundry is set in 1960s apartheid Johannesburg. Khuthala, a gifted young jazz musician, wants nothing to do with his family's laundry business and dreams of a life shaped by music, not soap and steam. When the government begins cracking down on Black-owned businesses, and Khuthala's father is arrested and brutally beaten, the musical dream begins to collapse as he must step up and protect the family, and their only source of income.

Director: Zamo Mkhwanazi
Writer: Zamo Mkhwanazi
Producers: Zamo Mkhwanazi, Philippe Coeytaux, Jim Stark, Nicolas Wadimoff, Marco Orsini
Cast: Ntobeko Sishi, Siyabonga Shibe, Bukamina Cebekhulu, Zekhethelo Zondi, Tracy September

Spanning continents and cultures, this collection of documentary shorts explores resilience, memory, identity, and community. From personal journeys to global struggles, these films examine lives shaped by change.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

We're thrilled to be working with Music for Galway to present Berlin-based Galway filmmaker Maclaine Black's short film Cellissimo – named after the local cello festival – which follows five international cello students around Galway during the 2024 edition of the festival. They study with internationally acclaimed cellists, perform a series of small pop-up concerts, and end with their showcase in the Town Hall Theatre. This beautiful short film will be preceded by a solo recital from Margarita Guerrero, the current Cellissimo Ambassador.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Maclaine Black
Producer: Anna Lardi

In a pocket of rural Ohio hit hard by the nationwide opioid epidemic, a court-mandated drug rehabilitation program offers help to those hoping to overcome addiction. While wrestling with their own internal struggles, Cody Parsons (Will Poulter) and his brother Jack (Noah Centineo) work toward sobriety with the support of a tireless counselor (Annette Deao) and a community of fellow locals in recovery. With a cast predominantly made up of non-professional actors sharing their experiences, pain, and hope, Ohio-born filmmaker Adam Meeks blends fiction and documentary for an honest, compassionate portrait of a battle being fought all over America and the solidarity that flowers on its front lines.

Director: Adam Meeks
Writer: Adam Meeks
Producers: Brad Brecker-Parton, Martha Gregory, Stephanie Roush, Faye Tsakas, Sean Weiner, Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Ellyn Daniels, Will O'Connor, Will Poulter
Cast: Will Poulter, Noah Centineo, Elise Kibler

Dublin, 1904. The elderly Misses Morkan and her niece, Mary Jane, host their annual dinner and musical soirée for friends, old and new. Among them are Gabriel Conroy (Donal McCann) and his wife Gretta (Anjelica Huston), a Galway woman. John Huston's subtle direction of a wholly distinguished ensemble of Irish actors perfectly captures the social atmosphere and emotional nuance of Joyce's original text. For Huston, the film served as an elegant and melancholic farewell to Ireland, and to life itself. The IFI Irish Film Archive presents this digital restoration supported by the Screen Ireland Digital Restoration Project. Introduced by Sunniva O'Flynn (IFI), Dr Tony Tracy (NUIG), and a recorded intro from cinematographer Fred Murphy.

Director: John Huston
Writers: James Joyce, Tony Huston
Producers: Wieland Schulz-Keil, Chris Sievernich
Cast: Donal McCann, Anjelica Huston, Marie Kean, Ingrid Craigie, Rachel Dowling, Colm Meaney, Donal Donnelly, Maria McDermottroe

The Colorado River is drying up. Reservoirs are falling to record lows, and drought continues to ravage the borderlands of the United States and Mexico. As the century-old project of re-engineering the natural systems of the American West begins to unravel, many on the fringes are pushed to the brink. Galway filmmakers Kevin Brennan and Laurence Durkin explore this phenomenon in the US and the many facets of its fallout and repercussions for the rest of the world.

Directors: Kevin Brennan, Laurence Durkin
Producers: Kevin Brennan, Laurence Durkin

In a not-too-distant future, a bankrupt film studio lies frozen and abandoned. Zha, a lonely janitor, escapes his empty life through a vivid virtual world, where he enters an online romance, and dreams of traveling to the Moon. When the illusion collapses, the studio's real destruction is turned into the set of a sci-fi film. This beautifully animated dystopian dreamscape from Chinese filmmaker Zao Xu is a must for the big screen.

Director: Zao Xu
Writer: Zao Xu
Producer: Xiaowei Lu
Cast: Peng Da, Yi Qing

Oscar Boyson's Sundance hit is an incisive look at the widening class divide in US society. Balthazar (Jaeden Martell), a wealthy New York teenager tries, to win over his activist crush by travelling to Texas to stop a would-be mass shooter, Solomon (Asa Butterfield), a misguided young man from a very different world. A skilful mix of tender, unsettling and hugely empathetic, this audacious comedy-drama is a terrific debut from an exciting new voice in American cinema.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Oscar Boyson
Writers: Ricky Camilleri, Oscar Boyson
Producers: Oscar Boyson, Ricky Camilleri, Jon Wroblewski, David Duque-Estrada, Miles Skinner, Alex Hughes, Jaeden Martell
Cast: Jaeden Martell, Asa Butterfield, Chris Bauer, Jennifer Ehle, Anna Baryshnikov, Noah Centineo, Becky Ann Baker, Avan Jogia, Pippa Knowles

Off the coast of West Clare lies Cill Stuifín, a village long believed to have been swallowed by the sea – some say by a freak wave, others by an ancient curse. In this cinematic documentary, folklorist Aindrias de Staic follows in his late father's footsteps to uncover the truth behind the legend. As haunting stories collide with scientific discoveries, geologists reveal evidence of a cataclysmic event, while big wave surfers confront the powerful reef that guards its secrets.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Kev L. Smith
Writers: Kev L. Smith, Breej Masterson
Producers: Kev L. Smith, Donncha Mac Con Iomaire, Deirdre Learmont
Cast: Aindrias De Staic, Tara Howley, Ailbhe Nic Giolla Chomhaill, Ollie O'Flattery, Callum Curtin, Martina McCarthy, Jack O'Donovan Trá, Felim O'Toole, Marie Connole, Dónal Ó Cinnéide

Filmed over three and a half years on the front lines of the Russian-Ukrainian war, this visceral and often brutal documentary follows a young Ukrainian filmmaker who trades his camera for a rifle and joins the Territorial Defence Forces. An ordinary civilian with a filmmaker's eye, thrust into extraordinary violence, he documents his transformation from storyteller to soldier – capturing fear, loss, and resilience, while preserving rare moments of humanity in the chaos of war.

Directors: Artem Ryzhykov, Juan Camilo Cruz
Writers: Juan Camilo Cruz, Jesper Osmund
Producers: Artem Ryzhykov, Juan Camilo Cruz, Howard Owens, John Battsek

One of the breakout audience favourites of Sundance, Joybubbles tells the fascinating story of a young blind boy in 1960s America, who discovers he can control the global telephone system by whistling a unique tone which unlocks free long-distance calls. Through his search for connection and conversation, his early obsession with the telephone sparks a subculture that shapes the future of hacking and technology. And that's just part of his remarkable story.With audio description headsets and captioning devices available.

Director: Rachael J. Morrison
Producers: Sarah Winshall, Will Butler, Annie Marr

Academy Award nominee and acclaimed documentarian Amir Bar-Lev returns to the Fleadh with a new documentary exploring a harrowing and ultimately tragic 2021 expedition where three expert mountaineers set out to be the first to summit K2 in the winter, when the mountain's conditions are the cruellest. The men soon find themselves sharing the treacherous ascent with influencer climbers and their film crews, commercial expedition clients, and a celebrity mountaineer, none of whom are prepared for the harrowing ordeal ahead.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Amir Bar Lev
Producers: John Battsek, Ben Silverman, Sarah Thomson, Sean Richard, Howard Owens

You Got Gold: A Celebration of John Prine is a star-studded tribute concert film, captured in October 2022 at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, honouring the legendary songwriter's enduring legacy. Featuring heartfelt performances and behind-the-scenes stories, the event brought together family, friends, and acclaimed artists like Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Tyler Childers, Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam, Kacey Musgraves, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings to celebrate Prine's life and music on the iconic stage.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Michael John Warren
Producers: Fiona Prine, Dave Sirulnick, Samanatha Mustari
Cast: Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Tyler Childers, Dwight Yoakum, Jason Isbell, Steve Earle

Ondřej Provazník's powerful Broken Voices is a sensitive exploration of institutional abuse. In early 1990s Prague, 13-year-old Karolína earns a place in a prestigious and world-renowned girls' choir, joining her older sister and other talented young singers. She is flattered to catch the attention of the respected and enigmatic choirmaster, until the unsettling price of that privilege becomes frighteningly clear. Inspired by true events, the film explores the fragile line where innocence collides with abusive power.

Director: Ondřej Provazník
Writer: Ondřej Provazník
Producers: Jiří Konečný, Ivan Ostrochovský

Presented alongside our friends at East Asian Film Festival Ireland, we're pleased to bring you Kunao Yan's Jet Lag In Summer. After a difficult time finding a job in New York, Jiaqi decides to go back to China during the pandemic, while her boyfriend Pingu insists on staying to complete his ambitious thesis film production. However, a sudden announcement interrupts Jiaqi's plan and, during their separation, both have a chance to experience a special period of their lives. 

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Kunao Yan
Writers: Kunao Yan, Shuli Tan
Producers: Qianfan Chen, Lauren Yue Pan, Kunao Yan
Cast: Shuyao Chen, Kunao Yan, Maria Müller, Jueun Kang

Dean Conway's debut feature, Conversations in Bed, is a fully improvised chamber piece which takes place over two separate days in the life of a young man – through languid mornings in bed with two different girls, years apart. The first day takes place in the summer before his final year of school, and the second, years later, in the university area of Belfast. Working without a script, the three lead actors bring a level of intimacy and authenticity to the film and their characters.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Dean Conway
Writer: Dean Conway
Producer: Dean Conway
Cast: Jonny Grogan, Grace McMahon, Skye McClenaghan

Set in Cyprus in 1882, this impressive folk horror from Minos Papas features a stunning central performance by Margarita Zachariou as a mother whose grief is weaponised against her. After the accidental death of her children, painter Eleni is shunned by her fellow villagers for bringing a curse upon them. Inconsolable and isolated, Eleni tries to resurrect her children through an image-making ritual, only to unwittingly unleash furious otherworldly forces.

Director: Minos Papas
Writers: Minos Papas, Nikolas Kouroumtzis
Producers: Minos Papas, Constantinos Nikiforou, Darko Popov
Cast: Margarita Zachariou, Miltos Yerolemou, Sifis Katsoulakis

From fairy tales and folklore to religion, migration, work, and ambition, these international shorts explore identity, desire and transformation.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Blending profound emotional drama with sharp dark comedy, this powerful collection offers a moving look into life's heaviest burdens and most intimate struggles.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Based on true events. Sara, an eighteen-year-old Syrian girl, her boyfriend Bay, and their two-year-old daughter are crammed among other migrants in an overcrowded vehicle driving through Belgium in a desperate attempt to start a new life in England. As they embark on their perilous journey, they are pursued by Belgian Police, who are on a mission to hunt down human traffickers, resulting in an unthinkable tragedy that leads to personal and political fallout for everyone.

Director: Marta Bergman
Writer: Martha Bergman
Producers: Cassandre Warnault, Geneviève Lavoie
Cast: Salim Kechiouche, Lucie Debay, Arieh Worthalter, Marie Denarneau, Nathalie Broods, Yoann Zimmer, Ruth Beeckmans, Abd Alsweha

Seán quits his office job and leaves Ireland to walk the Camino de Santiago. He meets fellow walker Ana, a Galician grandmother, and although they don't speak the same language they start walking together. Over the course of their journey, they share their lives and grief with each other as strangers, freed from the restrictions of language, and discover the simple pleasure of finding a connection with a new friend, despite your differences.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Directors: Cian Desmond, Jack Desmond
Writer: Cian Desmond
Producers: Silvia Laguna López, Cian Desmond, Jack Desmond
Cast: Amhlaoibh Mac Suibhne, Elena Seijo, Iria Fernández Brañas, Conchúr Ó Luasa, Eibhlín Ní Lionáird

Join us for a selection of bite-sized non-fiction films that challenge perspectives and celebrate the human spirit. From personal stories to global concerns, these films offer a glimpse into the diverse realities of our world.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

When Jihan was six years old, her father flew to Cairo and never returned. Mansur Rashid Kikhia was the Foreign Minister of Libya, ambassador to the United Nations, and a human rights lawyer. Jihan's mother Baha Al Omary, a strong-willed Syrian-American artist, began searching for him, launching the family into an international political maze. Jihan revisits and unpacks this powerful story with her unique perspective on power and corruption in this singular, personal documentary.

Director: Jihan K
Producers: Jihan K., Dave Guenette, Mohamed Soueid, Sol Guy, Valentina Castellani-Quinn

A romance rooted in a love of architecture, landscape and forward-thinking. It was one of the great, untold love stories of the 20th century. For 50 years, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown shared a life of profound tenderness, sharp wit, and creative joy. They also sparked a revolution in architecture, challenging the rigid modernism of the era with their embrace of complexity, symbolism, and the lessons of the everyday landscape. Presented in association with AATE Architecture at the Edge.

Directors: Jim Venturi, Anita Naughton
Writer: Anita Naughton
Producer: Jim Venturi

U2's Adam Clayton explores the phenomenon of 1960s Irish showbands, when thousands of musicians performed the latest hits live in ballrooms. Chronicling a hugely successful local industry, made up of working-class musicians, that created legends such as Joe Dolan and Dickie Rock, and future rock heroes Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher, this new feature-length cut of Billy McGrath's Ballroom Boom is a fascinating snapshot of a time when Ireland created, and worshipped, its own stars.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Billy McGrath
Writer: Billy McGrath
Producer: Billy McGrath

We're proud to bring you the World Premiere of Coco's Law, an inspiring documentary about an Irish woman whose courage and vision for change ultimately impacted the lives of 450 million Europeans. After the tragic suicide of her beloved daughter, Nicole (Coco), due to online bullying, Jackie walks a path she never thought she'd have to take as she leads a campaign to change Irish and EU law to make online bullying a crime.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Gerard Walsh
Writer: Gerard Walsh
Producer: Alex Fegan

From lingering memories and lost opportunities to unexpected reunions and acts of compassion, these international shorts explore absence, remembrance, and connection, revealing the traces people leave behind.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Sinead Murphy's debut film, Sludge, follows a young homeless woman living on the fringes of Irish society and deeply in love with her best friend. Haunted by fractured traumatic memories and visions of a dark-hooded figure, she struggles to hold onto reality as her friend is drawn into the orbit of a dangerous underworld. As her world unravels, she must confront the terrifying truth behind the figure that stalks her, and face the darkness within.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Sinead Murphy
Writer: Sinead Murphy
Producer: Sinead Murphy
Cast: Shauna Radford, PJ Gallagher, Katie Murtagh, Ray Malone

Spacetime Chronicles is a surreal, dreamlike animated tale that follows the inner journey of Fred, suspended between reality, dream, and limbo, and guided by a cat that acts as his conscience. Using paper as the main material for his stop-motion feature, Stefano Bertelli crafts a stunning visual journey through symbolic episodes – bullies, exams, missed encounters, a mysterious girl on a tram – weaving a mosaic of existential doubt and fragile identity.

Director: Stefano Bertelli
Writer: Stefano Bertelli
Producer: Stefano Bertelli

Winner of the Best International First Feature with his film Still in 2022, Simon Anderson Blake returns to the Fleadh with the World Premiere of his decadent visual feast Black Noise, starring Kate Phillips and Aidan Gillen. In a decaying hotel, writer Leda arrives to expose a dysfunctional family's crimes. Drawn under the enigmatic Butler's spell, reality dissolves into hallucinogenic dreams, and a banquet becomes a Grand Guignol massacre, forcing Leda to confront how far she'll go for justice and closure.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Simon Blake
Writers: Morrison Spencer Brown, Simon Blake
Producer: Colette Delaney-Smith
Cast: Aidan Gillen, Kate Phillips, Tom Mothersdale, Rebecca Calder, Michael Jibson, Jeanie Hackman, Alexa Delaney-Smith

Taispeántas ar chuid de na Gearrscannáin a léiríodh faoi scéimeanna Tús & Céim Eile. Tionscnamh Scripte do Ghearrscannáin Ghaeilge is ea Tús & Céim Eile, maoinithe ag TG4, Fís Éireann agus an ILBF, le drámaíocht nua i nGaeilge a spreagadh agus leis an scríbhneoireacht chruthaitheach Gaeilge a thabhairt chun cinn.

Seo cuid de na tograí álainn atá tagtha chun cinn.

Screening as part of our spotlight on Estonian cinema, this deep, funny, and provocative documentary follows a young girl, Roosi, for ten years from age eight to eighteen. Having grown up as the child of an environmental activist, she struggles to cope with climate grief and guilt as she moves from childhood to adulthood. Roosi tries to find her own identity and place in the world, revealing refreshing wisdom about contemporary life through the eyes of a generation coming of age in an increasingly fluid reality.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Margit Lillak
Producers: Margit Lillak, Dirk Manthey
Cast: Roosi Mai Järviste

In late 1980s Mexico, wild and wise eight-year-old Roberta watches her family of seven women fight to save their home from mounting debt, a struggle that reshapes how she sees herself and those around her. Joyfully nostalgic, with a sharp dose of lurking reality, writer-director Mayra Hermosillo has crafted a very special film that celebrates the necessity of self-belief and sisterhood in overcoming the many obstacles life throws your way.

Director: Mayra Hermosillo
Writer: Mayra Hermosillo
Producers: Stacy Perskie, Karla Luna Cantú, Andrea Porras Madero, Paloma Petra
Cast: Aurora Dávila, María Castellá, Natalia Plascencia, Paloma Petra

Terry Loane brings to life Marilyn Taylor's beloved, award-winning young adult novel, Faraway Home, which tells the gripping true story of two young Jewish children who are sent by their parents from Nazi-occupied Austria, via the Kindertransport, to Millisle refugee farm in Northern Ireland, smack in the middle of its own troubles. Thousands of miles from their parents, they begin to adjust to Irish farm life and create a found family of their own among their fellow refugees and hosts. However, when German bombs hit Belfast in the 1941 Blitz, the war is brought back to their doorstep. A sharply observed tale of resilience and heroism when ordinary people are faced with extraordinary circumstances.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Terry Loane
Writers: Stephen Gibson, Clare Sera
Producers: Stephen Gibson, Clare Sera, T.J. Berden, David Kang, David Barron, Oisín O'Neill, Katy Jackson, Janine Cobain, Chloe Gibson, Mark O'Sullivan, Harvey Ascott
Cast: Leo Alonso-Kallscheuer, Michiel Huisman, Iddo Goldberg, Anton Lesser, Anna Bederke, Alexander Finkenworth, Eileen O'Higgans, Flora Montgomery, Geraldine McAlinden, Freyja Doucet, Doireann McNally, Mya McFaul, Joshua McLees, Pola Kasprzyk, Venus Doucet

James Wynne's Irish-language documentary follows Belfast's Star of the Sea, the best youth football team in Ireland. The team was made up of Protestant and Catholic players from the mixed local community of Rathcoole, who played and socialised together without political friction. Despite attention from the UK professional teams, by the mid-70s the team had been torn apart by the Troubles, and the future revealed very different plans for these young men, among them their full-back Bobby Sands.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: James Wynne
Producer: James Wynne
Cast: Fionnuala Ni Fhlatharta

Spanning the dawn of cinema to the present day, The Story of Documentary Film offers a rich history – told in a fresh and dynamic way. Drawing on Mark Cousins' three decades of research into documentary, the series will re-examine classics and explore how the genre has evolved over the course of a century. Here we present the first episode of the series, focusing on early documentaries, including Robert J. Flaherty's seminal work Man of Aran, shot on the Aran Islands.

Director: Mark Cousins
Writer: na na
Producer: John Archer

This dark psychological battle of wills from debut Finnish filmmaker Josefina Rautiainen explores the complexity of fantasy. A vibrant young woman, Heloisa, confides in her therapist, Anu, that she has dark, murderous thoughts about the men she dates, even if she really likes them. When Heloisa abruptly ends therapy, Anu believes their bond has been severed, until, at a summer gathering, her son arrives with his new girlfriend: Heloisa. Anu is forced to confront the blurred boundaries of their shared past.

Director: Josefina Rautiainen
Writer: Josefina Rautiainen
Producers: Maija Hartikainen, Miikka Pakarinen
Cast: Jonna Järnefelt, Alina Tomnikov

In 1995, before camera phones, before social media, filmmaker Tamra Davis brought her camera on tour with her then-husband Mike D from Beastie Boys. The Best Summer is a document of an era-defining moment in music, in the analogue glory days. Tamra's unprecedented and completely informal access to electric performances, candid interviews, and intimate backstage life with Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Rancid, Beck, The Amps, and Bikini Kill makes this documentary a must-see for any 90s rock fan.

Director: Tamra Davis
Producers: Tamra Davis, Shelby Meade

Written and directed by Irish-born Australian Adam Morris, featuring original songs by Declan O'Rourke, with additional score by Luka Bloom. Almost With You takes place in the picturesque coastal Australian town of Albany, where touring Irish musician Brendan Kelly (Declan O'Rourke) is on the last leg of an Australian tour. Still coming to terms with the recent loss of his brother, and struggling to keep his music career on track, Brendan's encounter with local woman Sarah turns his life wonderfully upside down, introducing him to a colourful community of musicians, and rekindling his love affair with music. Almost With You is a lyrical portrait of resilience, second chances and the true purpose of music. Featuring Declan O'Rourke as a restless troubadour, bringing the world his trademark soulful folk songs.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Adam Morris
Writers: Adam Morris, Talarah Pedrocchi Roelofs
Producers: Tait Brady, Daniel Mulvihill, Adam Morris, Talarah Pedrocchi Roelofs
Cast: Declan O'Rourke, Chloe Hurst, Darren "Gallie" Gallagher, Stephen Pigram

Often described as 'avant-garde punk', Dublin musician Meryl Streek is dark and dangerous – a cocktail of rage and despair. Onstage he's a prowler – menacing, apoplectic, and snarling like a young Joe Strummer. Rage Against the Dying of the Light is not only a portrait of an artist, but a snapshot of a challenging time in Irish culture amid a massive housing crisis and a fear of artistic homogenisation – highlighting the importance of dissenting, unique and rousing voices.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Directors: Paul McCarroll, Kate McCarroll
Producers: Paul McCarroll, Dave Gilvaney

Cowboys, dreamers, outlaws, and wanderers populate this collection of international shorts. Exploring love, revenge, family, identity and transformation.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Billy's friends decide to take him on a college rite of passage – to the chair of their favourite barber, the wildly eccentric and possibly deranged Mick. Is Mick just a harmless weirdo, or is he hiding something far more sinister – possibly connected to the disappearance of a local college girl? Bad Haircut is a wild ride with an unforgettable horror villain, Mick, played with immeasurable gusto by a brilliantly unhinged Frankie Ray.

Director: Kyle Misak
Writer: Kyle Misak
Producers: Jon Petro, Kyle Misak, Jesse Charles, Adam Renaud
Cast: Spencer Harrison Levin, Frankie Ray, Nora Freetly

Dark comedy, high-stakes suspense, and evocative drama merge in these stories as they explore the absurdities and emotional depths of the human experience.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

This selection offers a poignant look at the quiet battles, acts of rebellion, and unexpected moments of fortitude that define everyday life.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

On the edge of California's Sonoran Desert lies Slab City, a near-lawless squatter town inhabited by nomads, anarchists, and outcasts. Within this off-grid community, a group of queer and trans youths create a vibrant haven known as Flamingo Camp. In the hot summer months, the stress of survival comes to a boil – resulting in an unthinkable tragedy that fractures this once close-knit chosen family. An eye-opening documentary about the vulnerability of those living on the fringes of society.

Director: Chris Coats
Producer: Zackary Drucker

Based loosely on the filmmaker's real-life friends, Rolling Papers is a funny, warm and entertaining "hangout movie" in the grand tradition of 90s filmmakers like Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith, complete with stoner energy and a colourful cast of characters. Sebastian, working as a store clerk, finds his ordinary workday shaken up when he befriends Silo, a free-spirited wanderer. Together they ramble through parties, make friends, fall in love, and dream of moving to Brazil to live a carefree life.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Meel Paliale
Writer: Meel Paliale
Producers: Rain Rannu, Tõnu Hiielaid, Urmet Piiling
Cast: Mihkel Kuusk, Edgar Vunsh, Maria Helena Seppik, Juhan Soon

Before Coachella and Woodstock, there was the Newport Folk Festival. From award-winning filmmakers Robert Gordon and Joe Lauro, and drawn from rare, previously-unseen archival footage, Newport & the Great Folk Dream is an immersive experience, told by those who were there – including Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, and Pete Seeger. Illuminating struggle, inspiring courage, and stirring passionate controversy, the festival created a forum for protest songs, for a generation to find its voice, and for Bob Dylan to evolve from political balladeer to leather-jacketed rock n' roller.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Robert Gordon
Producers: Joe Lauro, Laura Jean Hocking
Cast: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Son House, Johnny Cash, Odetta

Presented in conjunction with our friends at AATE – Architecture at the Edge, we journey into Can Lis, the coastal residence Jørn Utzon designed in Mallorca. More than a house, it reflects a deep harmony between architecture and nature. Using local materials and sustainable principles long before they became global concerns, this documentary uncovers how Utzon's travels, memories and vision shaped a work that invites us to rethink how we build for the future.

Director: Juan Alberto Morillas
Writer: Juan Alberto Morillas
Producers: Juan Alberto Morillas, Monica Rodriguez
Cast: Piers Taylor, Francisco Cifuentes, Line Nørskov Davenport

The feel-good documentary of the year, Oisín Mistéil's debut film, Try!, follows four Irish rugby players who defy all expectations on their journey to the most inclusive and competitive World Cup you've never seen. Mixed ability rugby is 15-a-side, full contact rugby played by people with and without disabilities, all with a dream of lifting the trophy at the Mixed Abilities Rugby World Cup in Spain, where 32 teams compete to be the best in the world. Mistéil approaches the subject with heart and humour, and a camera that feels like part of the team. Try! is a powerful celebration of the power of sport in creating community for those who never belonged before, and leaves the viewer with a true sense that inclusion is a positive thing and creating change can be joyous, freeing and fun, challenging ideas about what teamwork looks like and celebrating strength in diversity.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Oisín Mistéil
Writer: Oisín Mistéil
Producer: Claire McCabe

Filmed over three and a half years on Ukraine's front lines, Brace for Oblivion follows seven ordinary citizens who volunteered to defend their country immediately after Russia's invasion. Often filmed under fire, with sustained access to Ukraine's volatile combat zones, filmmaker Xackery Irving explores what happens to the body, mind and soul when everyday life becomes a form of survival. Irving's camera tracks the seven soldiers and their struggle to reconnect with the precious elements of life they are devoted to protecting.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Xackery Irving
Writer: Xackery Irving
Producers: Xackery Irving, Rick Santoa, James Feeney

This collection of international shorts explores the many forms care can take – between parents and children, friends and strangers, communities and loved ones.

Thoughtful and moving, these films celebrate human connection.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Winner of the prestigious Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, Closure is a nuanced and rigorous look at shared grief and extraordinary courage. After his teenage son goes missing, Daniel spends his days scouring the depths of the Vistula River, torn between the dread of a fatal leap and the hope that his son may still be alive. While this lonely task is essential for him, it also allows him to help others face their own tragic losses.

Director: Michał Marczak
Producers: Monika Braid, Michał Marczak, Rémi Grellety, Katarzyna Szczerba, Karolina Marczak

Acclaimed Irish filmmaker Cara Holmes (Notes From Sheepland) uncovers the history of the so-called "lesbian lines", an underground network of helplines built by a community of lesbians offering connection, survival, and defiance through the simple act of answering the phone to women who found themselves restricted by conservative Irish society. In a time when it was still illegal to be homosexual in Ireland, this helpline was a necessary life-changing resource that opened up a social world of safe spaces and deep connection to many of its users and volunteers who had previously been isolated in a secret world of their own. This story, told with grace and humour by many of the volunteers themselves, is an important archival document, a celebration of community and friendship, and a retrospective indictment of a restrictive 1980s Catholic Ireland.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Cara Holmes
Writer: Cara Holmes
Producer: Evan Horan

A standout from the Venice Film Festival, award-winning Father, from Tereza Nvotová, examines the fallout of a tragic mistake which shatters the life of a devoted father, shaking his marriage, and isolating him in guilt. As the threat of prison looms, he and his wife come to understand that the tragedy was not a personal failure, but something deeply rooted in the architecture of the human mind, and a fragile path toward forgiveness begins to emerge.

Director: Tereza Nvotová
Writers: Dusan Budzak, Tereza Nvotová
Producers: Veronika Pastekova, Miloš Lochman, Mariusz Włodarski
Cast: Milan Ondrik, Dominika Moravkova, Anna Geislerova

Writer-director John Farrelly (An Taibhse) returns to the Fleadh with his second feature film. On a research trip to the Greek island of Naxos, Adam, an Irish family man, steps through an ancient marble gateway and wakes in a parallel life, where his wife, children, and responsibilities no longer exist. Drawn into a romance with Nysa, a local waitress, he is seduced by the freedom of this new life, while the one he left behind begins calling him back.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: John Farrelly
Writer: John Farrelly
Producers: John Farrelly, Tom Kerrisk
Cast: Tom Kerrisk, Maira Gravani, Angeliki Kalovyrna, Moya Farrelly, Katerina Gavalla, Ronan Fegan, Georgios Gavalla

In 2015, comedian Jon Rudnitsky landed his dream job as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. One season later, Jon was fired. Over the last decade, he has toured comedy clubs and small venues across the country. Each year, the crowds grow smaller and the income thinner. Special Boy is an intimate, warts-and-all portrait of the realities of life on the road, surviving in the entertainment industry, and how long someone can spend chasing their dream.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Noah Findling
Producers: Laurie David, Cazzie David, Peter Sobiloff, Mike Sobiloff, Paige Burger
Cast: Jon Rudnitsky, Noah Findling

The Fleadh will host the Irish Premiere of Learning to Breathe Under Water – filmed on location in Galway. After the death of his mother, eight-year-old Leo's (Ezra Carlisle) best friend is a massive shark that his dad (Rory Kinnear), an artist, built into the roof of their home. Leo confides in the shark to process his peculiar new reality until a spirited au pair (Academy Award nominee Maria Bakalova) challenges him and his grieving dad to step out of their heads, and open themselves up to the wild, wonderful mess of real life.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Rebekah Fortune
Writer: Richard Brabin
Producers: Patrick O'Neill, Jack Tarling, Heather Higgins, Ivan McMahon
Cast: Rory Kinnear, Maria Bakalova, Ezra Carlisle

In a Cornish seaside village, Morwenna is reeling from a breakup and struggling to make ends meet as an artist. After an awkward one-night stand with Inga, a strange but intriguing fur-clad stranger, Morwenna discovers that her new love is a Selkie – a shapeshifter who changes from woman to seal. Caught up in a whirlwind situationship with someone whose feelings are as fickle as the sea, Morwenna faces some impossible choices in this utterly unique romantic fairytale.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Isabel Moncloa Daly
Writers: Issy Brett, Isabel Moncloa Daly, Carys Glynne
Producer: Carys Glynne
Cast: Anna Ivankovic, Carys Glynne, Anna Liddell

Pós Mé is an innovative and entertaining new documentary that looks at the history of love, sex and marriage in Ireland. It explores the hidden history of the complicated relationship Irish people have had with sex and marriage, and shines a new light on some surprising aspects of it for the first time. Through lively, funny and honest interviews, and fascinating archive tales, Pós Mé looks at contemporary and historical attitudes, laws and norms to discover that Ireland's history between the sheets is not at all as conservative and strait-laced as we might think.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Ciara Hyland
Writer: Ciara Hyland
Producer: Colin O Mahoney

From debut writer-director Dallan Shovlin and featuring a stellar cast of talented Irish actors, we're excited to bring you the World Premiere of You'll Never Believe Who's Dead, a fresh, funny and deliciously dark Irish comedy. As the Cosgrove family gather for a traditional Irish Christmas, and their financial problems come to the fore, a solution presents itself in the form of a robbery of local reclusive farmer Charlie Bann. But the Cosgroves have bitten off more than they can chew, as Charlie Bann is not who he seems to be. As the Cosgroves get deeper into their disastrous plan, the film reveals itself to be a sharply observed comedy about family, individuality, and late-stage capitalism.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Dallan Shovlin
Writer: Dallan Shovlin
Producers: Oliver Butler, Patrick O'Neill, Trevor Birney, Oliver Butler
Cast: Peter Claffey, Ruth Codd, Jacob McCarthy, Michelle Fairley, Ardal O'Hanlon, Simone Kirby, Stephen Rea

Recently premiered at Berlinale, Irish co-production How to Divorce During the War follows high-flying executive Marija, who chooses the worst possible moment for an honest conversation with her husband, Vytas, about divorcing – just one day before Russia's full-scale invasion of neighbouring country Ukraine. Now the couple must navigate the process of separation as it collides with a refugee crisis, middle-class guilt, and their own mid-life crises. 

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Andrius Blaževičius
Writer: Andrius Blaževičius
Producers: Marija Razgutė, Jessie Fisk
Cast: Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė, Marius Repšys, Amelija Adomaitytė, Indrė Patkauskaitė, Gintarė Parulytė

In the 1970s, Diane Jobson made a name for herself as Bob Marley's lawyer, converting to Rastafarianism under his influence. After his death, she dedicated her career to defending Jamaica's poorest communities. Now 80, the fiercely stubborn attorney still works without a computer, taking handwritten notes and helping clients facing police violence and murder charges. Blending humour and profundity, the film ultimately celebrates a woman who has lived entirely on her own terms. 

Director: Amanda Sans Pantling
Writer: Amanda Sans Pantling
Producers: Amanda Sans Pantling, Tammy Hart
Cast: Diane Jobson, Sally Henzell, Rohan Marley, Robert Marley, Khadine "Miss Kitty", Richard Booker, Omarley Dennis

Mystical, intimate and profoundly moving, At the Place of Ghosts follows two estranged Mi'kmaq brothers whose childhood trauma has deeply affected their adult lives. When a malevolent​ spirit​​ ​begins tormenting them, the siblings are forced to reunite and journey into Sk+te'kmujue'katik, a primordial forest ​that​​ ​exists outside of time, to confront their violent upbringing. Here they must cleanse their past and face their future in a bold visual feast that combines lush mythological imagery and sincere emotional stakes.

Director: Bretten Hannam
Writer: Bretten Hannam
Producers: Jason Levangie, Marc Tetrault, Martin Katz, Diana Elbaum, Bretten Hannam
Cast: Forrest Goodluck, Blake Miranda, Glen Gould, Brandon Oakes, Cherish Violet Blood

Hypnotic and bizarre, the story slowly unfolds in the form of low-budget TV ads, revealing a sinister tale of two restaurants battling it out in the fictional town of Westridge County. Ads for insurance, used car rivals, and a local religious scholar and recording artist converge to tell the story of an expanding sinkhole, a cult, and an ever-growing restaurant that becomes unsettlingly sentient. A singular cinematic experience, Buffet Infinity drips with mischief, mayhem and humour.

Director: Simon Glassman
Writer: Simon Glassman
Producer: Michael Peterson
Cast: Kevin Singh, Ahmed Ahmed, Brandon Vanderwall, Allison Bench

Step into the shadows and join us in a world of the unsettling, the uncanny, and the terrifying.

This programme of horror shorts showcases inventive filmmakers exploring fear in all its forms, across a wide range of subgenres.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

This collection offers a captivating look at contemporary Irish life, exploring universal themes of resilience, personal identity, and human connection through a diverse range of voices and landscapes.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Karima Saïdi's profound documentary, Those Who Watch Over, explores the ways in which the descendants of immigrants – Christian, Jewish, and Muslim – visit their deceased. Set entirely within the walls of Brussels' multifaith cemetery, intimate encounters reveal how the cemetery becomes a place full of life, a neighbourhood where different communities co-exist while respecting each other's practices. This unique and sacred place unveils a profound relationship between the living and their dead, and the unifying power of grief. 

Director: Karima Saïdi
Writer: Karima Saïdi
Producer: Julie Freres

Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland is proud to present the World Premiere of an exciting selection of new Irish short films funded under the agency's Focus Shorts and Frameworks short film schemes.

Frameworks are co-funded by RTÉ.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Myrsini Aristidou's sparkling Sundance winner Hold Onto Me follows free-spirited 11-year-old Iris, who is running wild through the streets of Cyprus when she learns her estranged father, Aris, is back in town for his own father's funeral. Determined to know him, whether he wants to or not, Iris tracks him down. What begins as a stubborn attempt to reconnect slowly unfolds into a fragile bond, imperfect, yet poignant.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Myrsini Aristidou
Writer: Myrsini Aristidou
Producers: Myrsini Aristidou, Monica Nicolaidou, Anders N.U. Berg, Konstantina Stavrianou, Rena Vougioukalou
Cast: Christos Passalis, Maria Petrova

Journalist Philip Boucher-Hayes ventures to the distant corners of the planet where climate change is unfolding most profoundly. Through conversations with those most affected, Boucher-Hayes discovers how people can learn to adapt and survive if they accept what's happening and are given help. This film looks ahead with hope that we might reinvent our economies, reimagine our landscapes, and rebuild our infrastructures, plotting a path for the survival of our civilisation this century and beyond. 

Post-screening discussion will follow

Directors: Garry Keane, Rachael Moriarty
Producer: Philip Boucher-Hayes

Exploring family, faith, displacement and belonging, this collection of Estonian shorts follows characters facing uncertainty and change. Poignant, humorous, and deeply human, these films reveal the complexities of everyday life.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Writer-director Patrick Wang (A Bread Factory – Part One and Part Two) returns to the Fleadh with his unique insight into the life and work of French poet Arthur Rimbaud. A stylish and bold film, performed entirely by the supremely charismatic young actor Blake Draper. Using Rimbaud's own words, the improbable life of Rimbaud unfolds with all the shock and playfulness of his poetry, creating a mesmerising link between form and content.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Patrick Wang
Writer: Patrick Wang
Producers: Fritzi Adelman, Daryl Freimark, Evan Johnson, Patrick Wang
Cast: Blake Draper

Lena is a cheerful student who firmly believes in happiness and the good in people. As part of a social project, she is sent to work as a writing coach for Hugo Drowak, who has long since lost his inspiration and lives alone in a run-down tower block. Despite his notorious nastiness, Lena doesn't give up, leading to an unlikely friendship as he finally starts to let the creative process take hold.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Nicolas Steiner
Writer: Bettina Gundermann
Producers: Marc Müller-Kaldenberg, Pascal Nothdurft, Katrin Renz
Cast: Luna Wedler, Karl Markovics, Lars Eidinger, Dominique Pinon, Saga Sarkola, Nikolai Gemel, Bettina Stucky, Jan Bülow

Ross McClean's delicate, non-judgmental debut feature documentary lets a complex story speak for itself, giving an impartial insight into the rarely seen tightrope walk of staying out of trouble. Ryan, a young man cycling in and out of prison in Northern Ireland, finds fleeting purpose working with sheep in correctional programs. What begins as a path toward rehabilitation slowly reveals itself as a deeper struggle: not just freedom from prison walls, but from the weight of grief, addiction, and community threats that shadow him outside. Moving between the rigid order of Magilligan Prison, the chaos of life beyond its gates, and the open fields where cycles of life renew, the film asks whether Ryan can ever find peace – or if he will remain trapped between worlds.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Ross McClean
Writers: Ross McClean, Bronte Stahl
Producers: Roisin Geraghty, Bronte Stahl

As part of our Estonian Spotlight this year, the Fleadh is pleased to present Eeva Mägi's latest feature – her previous film Mo Mama screened at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2024. After ten years in prison for accidentally causing his younger brother's death, 28-year-old Eugen returns home hoping to reconnect with his estranged father and friends. But the wounds of abandonment drag him back into destructive patterns. Mo Papa is a raw drama about trauma, guilt, love and forgiveness.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Eeva Mägi
Writer: Eeva Mägi
Producers: Sten-Johan Lill, Eeva Mägi
Cast: Jarmo Reha, Rednar Annus, Ester Kuntu

In Cinque Terre, fewer than three thousand locals share their cliffside villages with almost four million tourists a year. Irish filmmaker Gar O'Rourke (Sanatorium, winner of Best Irish Documentary at the 2025 Galway Film Fleadh) covers a summer on one of the most photographed coastlines in the world. Tracing six lives: Fabrizia, the young mayor torn between her community and the economy that sustains it; Bartolo, an ageing winegrower tending both his vines and his seriously ill wife; Guido, a fisherman betting on integrity over easy money; Carmelo, a weary restaurateur running on fumes; Giorgia, his young daughter weighing the pull of the family business against a life of her own beyond these villages; and Grace and Isabel, two influencers from Chicago on a quest for social media content. With an open heart, The Siege of Paradise asks important questions about over-tourism and our responsibility when we visit some of the world's most special places.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Gar O'Rourke
Producers: Andrew Freedman, Ken Wardrop, Jessie Hayden

Gael Garcia Bernal and Natalia Oreiro star as two strangers, both married and living thousands of miles apart, who meet at corporate retreat and find themselves with a connection that's so strong it forces them to reconsider their choices in life, and ask if it's worth upending everything in pursuit of what could be a fleeting fantasy. Fizzing with romance and warmth, this is a delightful story of yearning, taking stock, and taking the time to choose happiness.

Director: Juan Taratuto
Writers: Juan Taratuto, Matías Scartascini
Producers: Hernán Musaluppi, Santiago López, Diego Robino, Sandino Saravia Vina, Dolores Llosas, Juan Taratuto, Mariana Sanjurjo
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Natalia Oreiro

From writer-director Faraz Shariat (No Hard Feelings), Prosecution was the worthy winner of the Panorama Audience Award at this year's Berlinale. After surviving a brutal, racist attack, state prosecutor Seyo Kim takes her own case to court – confronting both the perpetrators and a frustrating justice system that tends to protect perpetrators more than it protects victims. Seyo's intimate professional knowledge of the system allows her to ensure justice, by any means necessary.

Director: Faraz Shariat
Writer: Claudia Schaefer
Producers: Paulina Lorenz, Jorgo Narjes, Faraz Shariat
Cast: Chen Emilie Yan, Julia Jentsch, Alev Irmak

Recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Palestinian filmmaker Rakan Mayasi makes his feature film debut with Yesterday The Eye Didn't Sleep. In a Bedouin village on the Lebanon-Syria border, an accidental death sparks a blood feud between two rival clans, leading to two spirited sisters being traded into marriage for peace. Will their sacrifice be enough – and can they actually find it within themselves to enter this new life?

Director: Rakan Mayasi
Writers: Wahid Ajmi, Rakan Mayasi
Producers: Jennifer Riiter, Rakan Mayasi

Fresh from its debut at Sundance, Irish filmmaker Sinead O'Shea (A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot, Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story) thoughtfully explores the complexities of wealth and power. Fergie Chambers is the son of one of the wealthiest families in the United States and has grown to despise the capitalist system in which he was raised. He wants to end inequality and destroy that system, leading to a complex and sometimes unbelievable journey as he recruits drifters and outsiders to help him achieve his dream of building a communist collective in rural Massachusetts. But what happens when people's lives are dependent on the whims of the wealthy, and what happens when they're left behind? Interrogative and non-judgmental, O'Shea creates a rich tapestry that explores the inevitability of inequality when wealth is so unevenly distributed.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Sinead O'Shea
Writer: Sinead O'Shea
Producers: Katie Holly, Claire McCabe, Sinead O'Shea, Sigrid Dyekjaer, SOS Productions, Real Lava

Four close friends, who bonded while fighting in WWII, have finally established themselves as renowned and respected filmmakers working in post-war Communist Yugoslavia. When their sexual orientation raises suspicion, a communist party loyalist, Emir, is assigned to sabotage their careers and lives. Their pursuit of freedom becomes a fight for survival for the artists, and Emir's beliefs are challenged as he witnesses the horror and degradation unfolding under the regime.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Ivona Juka
Writer: Ivona Juka
Producer: Anita Juka
Cast: Dado Cosic, Emir Hadzihafizbegovic, Djordje Galic, Slaven Doslo, Elmir Krivalic, Drazen Cucek, Anja šOvagović-Despot, Vojislav Brajović, Asja Jovanovic, Ivana Boban, Milica Mihajlovic, Svetozar Cvetkovic, Matija Prskalo, Marko Braic, Mislav Cavajda, Andrej Dojkic, Jan Dolezal, Goran Grgic, Anita Juka, Lena Juka šTambuk, Ivan Krištof, Stojan Matavulj, Pavle Matuško, Frano Maškovic, Sinisa Miletic, Domagoj Mrkonjic, Gloria Navarro, Marko Petric, Luka Petrusic, Deirdre Pike, Jure Radnic, Rade Radolovic, Janko Rakos, Laura Sinovcic, Boris Svrtan, Enes Vejzovic, Pasko Vukasovic, Nikolina Zuzenic

Eye-opening and empathetic, American Doctor follows three prominent medics as they travel to Gaza to volunteer in hospitals overwhelmed by war. The three friends couldn't be more different, but are bound by a shared oath to save lives. As they work to save lives amid bombardment, medical shortages, and personal danger, the doctors find themselves caught between medicine and politics, compelled not only to heal the wounded but to speak out about what they witness.

Director: Poh Si Teng
Producers: Kirstine Barfod, Reem Haddad

Having recently made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Victorian Psycho, based on the acclaimed novel by Virginia Feito, stars reigning scream queen Maika Monroe (Longlegs, It Follows), Jason Isaacs (The White Lotus), Thomasin Mackenzie (Last Night in Soho, Jojo Rabbit) and Ruth Wilson (The Woman in the Wall, The Little Stranger).  When eccentric governess Winifred (Monroe) arrives at a remote gothic manor in Victorian England, her unnerving charm hides a deadly secret. Strange, unsettling incidents become harder to ignore as Winifred descends into madness, and her increasingly brutal acts shatter the calm of the estate. How far will this psycho killer go, and who will survive her wrath? An elegant, playful nightmare from Zachary Wigon (Sanctuary) this Irish co-production is a fun, blood-soaked horror worth staying up late for!

Director: Zachary Wigon
Writer: Virginia Feito
Producers: Dan Kagan, Zachary Wigon, Nick Shumaker, Liz Siegal, Sebastien Raybaud, Katie Holly, Yvonne Donohoe
Cast: Maika Monroe, Jason Isaacs, Ruth Wilson, Thomasin McKenzie

We're honoured to host the World Premiere of Frank Berry's The Lost Children of Tuam. When amateur historian Catherine Corless begins examining records from a former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway, she stumbles upon evidence pointing towards a deeply troubling past. Refusing to let the questions go, she embarks on a painstaking investigation, putting her in conflict with the Church, State, and local town. As official resistance mounts, and unsettling discoveries emerge, her determination challenges powerful institutions, exposing a hidden chapter of Ireland's past that many would rather keep hidden. From the award-winning team of director Frank Berry, writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Element Pictures, Big Red Films, El Paso Pictures and Port Pictures.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Frank Berry
Writer: Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Producers: Liam Neeson, Jules Daly, Chelsea Morgan Hoffmann, Andrew Lowe, Ed Guiney, Martina Niland

Stela is a bored textile worker who decides to leave her dreadful family and all inhibitions behind and go to Bucharest to pursue and seduce Boban, an ageing Balkan crooner with the help of Vera Pop, a flashy-trashy demi-celebrity and sex toy entrepreneur. Part of an exciting new wave of Romanian cinema, Ivana Mladenović has crafted a frisky, mischievous, and fiercely intelligent farce about carnal desire and social dysfunction.

Director: Ivana Mladenovic
Writer: Ivana Mladenović
Producer: Ada Salomon
Cast: Katia Pascariu, Miodrag Mladenovic, Cendana Trifan

A gloriously ambitious, slick first feature from Co. Down filmmaker Cathal Fitzpatrick, Hollow Trees takes place years after a war that wiped out 50% of the world's population. A hardened survivor, Kent (Tom Kerrisk), and a young boy, Danny (Louis Kirwan), struggle to survive in the harsh environment. On a scavenging mission, Kent finds himself face to face with a new threat: a strange and terrifying creature capable of imitating humans. Beautifully shot by Bingham Ray New Talent Award-nominee Ross Power, this sci-fi horror film really shines on the big screen.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Cathal Fitzpatrick
Writer: Cathal Fitzpatrick
Producer: Cathal Fitzpatrick
Cast: Tom Kerrisk, Louis Kirwan, Rosey Hayes, Colin Malone

At once delightfully camp and achingly sincere, Maddie's Secret is written and directed by the multi-talented John Early (Eternity, The Comeback) who also stars as Maddie, a beautiful and big-hearted food influencer whose perfect life unravels when her rising fame awakens an adolescent struggle with an eating disorder. This comic melodrama is fresh and fun, and full of heart, also starring comedy icons Kate Berlant, Kristen Johnston, and Claudia O'Doherty.

Director: John Early
Writer: John Early
Producers: Harris Mayersohn, Luca Intili, John Early
Cast: John Early, Kate Berlant, Eric Rahill, Claudia O'Doherty, Conner O'Malley

When quiet, withdrawn Orla accompanies influencer friend Nessa and some of her trendy friends to a rural Irish manor house in the middle of nowhere, it's clear the weekend will be full of drama and personality clashes. As tensions mount in the house, something even darker is happening in the forest. Their internal dramas quickly fade as Orla realises that they have inadvertently awoken the ancient vampire Dearg Due from her slumber – and she's hungry!

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Marco van Belle
Writer: Marco van Belle
Producers: Jac Kerrin, Dominic Wright
Cast: Grace Collender, Clinton Liberty, Daisy Jelley, Niamh Hogan, Rhys Mannion, Oskar Smith, Charlotte Bradley, Molly McCann, Noella Brennan, Dominic Wright, Sadbh McMullin, Flynn Gray

Explore the delicate threads that connect us to our past, our faith, and each other.

By focusing on character driven personal stories, these films balance artistic vision with universal emotional appeal.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Explore the delicate threads that connect us to our past, our faith, and each other. By focusing on character driven personal stories, these films balance artistic vision with universal emotional appeal.

Films in our programme can include mature themes/adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Filmed over his final 18 months in government, the film tracks former Irish Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan's efforts to push through one of Europe's most ambitious climate plans while advocating internationally for renewable energy and climate justice. Woven through the politics is his tender relationship with his autistic son, Tommy, quietly reframing what persistence and patience really look like. A portrait of public service in the truest sense, where the willingness to keep going might be the most radical act of all.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Neasa Ní Chianáin
Writer: Neasa Ní Chianáin
Producers: David Rane, Hanne Phlypo, Ilja Roomans
Cast: Eamon Ryan, Edel Hackett

When a group of amateur female ice hockey players set out to revive Estonia's Women's National Team, their path is filled with obstacles: uneven skill levels, language barriers, wide age gaps, and a total lack of financial support. What unites them is a single dream: to compete and win at the World Championships. This honest and rousing documentary follows them as they transform from eager amateurs into a united national team.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Directors: Anastassia Zazhitskaya, Margus Õunapuu
Writer: Anastassia Zazhitskaya
Producer: Karoliina Lahti
Cast: Triinu Tuvike, Jaanika Väliste, Aleksandra Olga Seppar, Margaret Neering, Inguna Lukašēviča

Desire Lines is a term from the field of landscape architecture used, as Sara Ahmed writes, to describe 'unofficial paths, those marks left on the ground that show everyday comings and goings, where people deviate from the paths they are supposed to follow.'

Taken as a whole, the films featured in 'Desire Lines' by Basma al-Sharif, Chloe Brenan, Olivia Normile, Collectif Faire-Part and Eóin Heaney, offer up a picture of imposed and chosen deviation, a picture that takes in experiences of isolation and displacement alongside those of collective resistance and revelation, taking care to capture the fleeting moments where these possibilities can briefly intersect.

Full of spirited musical interludes, Mugarik Gabe – No Borders is a rousing music documentary that delves into the uniquely intertwined identities of musicians from the Basque Country and Kurdistan, revealing how their shared struggles and cultural expressions transcend borders. These immensely talented musicians, through the universal language of music, bring us on a journey of resistance, solidarity, and the search for freedom that connects distant yet kindred lands.

Director: Boris Guevara
Writer: Mugarik Gabe Collective
Producer: Orsola Casagrande

For decades the Students' Union at the University of Galway has produced some of Ireland's leading political figures, including former President Michael D. Higgins. Over the years these young activists not only defended students' rights, but found themselves on the front lines of battles stretching well beyond campus – from contraception to abortion, from the Troubles in Northern Ireland to war in the Middle East. Some issues have changed over time, though the overall mission remains the same. This documentary follows along as the current union executives organise protests and other events on and off campus, growing into their roles as leaders. Shot over two years, the film celebrates their passion and vitality, as well as the laughter, friendship and exuberance of youth, giving an inspiring insight into the reality of student life and the growth of strong, socially conscious leaders in whose hands the future lies.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Directors: Gerard Conway, Mark Byrne, Rob Dennis
Producers: Gerard Conway, Mark Byrne, Rob Dennis

We can't believe it's been ten years since the uproarious World Premiere at the Fleadh of The Young Offenders. If you were lucky enough to have been in the Town Hall Theatre that night, you'll remember the raucous energy raising the roof with laughter. We wanted to do something special this year to mark the ten-year anniversary and in the spirit of the film, we decided to do things a little differently. We're excited to host a very special live, inperson audio commentary with writer-director Peter Foott and stars Alex Murphy, Chris Walley and Hilary Rose. During this intimate screening, our special guests will watch along with the audience, guiding us through with insights into the filmmaking process and stories from the set of one of the most beloved Irish comedies of all time, which went on to spawn a smash-hit BBC TV show for five seasons to date.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Peter Foott
Writer: Peter Foott
Cast: Alex Murphy, Chris Walley, Hilary Rose

Having blown us away in last year's award-winner Christy, we're excited to return to the talented and charismatic Kabin Krew. This inspiring and highly entertaining documentary by Brendan Canty (Christy) follows various members of Kabin Krew as they explore identity and performance through music, poetry, and the Irish language. Guided by rapper and spoken word artist Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin, this film shows how creativity and music can make learning Irish natural, empowering, and deeply personal. 

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Brendan Canty
Writers: Brendan Canty, Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin
Producer: Máire Ní Dhuinnín
Cast: Garry McCarthy, Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin, Darren Stewart, Aaron Hennessy, Sophia McNamara, Heidi White, Rosaleen Brady, Ellen Martin

Irish filmmaker and artist Yvonne McDevitt brings her experimental and unique visual storytelling to the big screen with Trumpets. On the anniversary of her son's death, Magda, a Polish immigrant in Ireland, returns from Italy to Donegal, where an unexpected encounter with a Rwandan refugee reveals their shared experience of displacement in a rapidly changing country. A journey of discovery between two very different people who find a bond within their shared trauma.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Yvonne McDevitt
Writer: Yvonne McDevitt
Producers: Astrid Van der Hausen, Edwina Forkin
Cast: Malgosia Bela, Deji Adenuga

The Badger of Ballybog is a comedy mockumentary following the contestants of Ireland's premier men's beauty pageant, including five-time reigning champ Little Johnny, competition bad boy Big Daddy, the young and eager Declan Dweeb, international man of mystery Nakamura Ozu, and American folk singer Duke Davis. It's like the Rose of Tralee, but for lads. Featuring an all-star cast of Irish comedy favourites this film feels like your favourite improv night, but on the silver screen – where it belongs!

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: John Spillane
Writer: John Spillane
Producer: John Spillane
Cast: Liam Kelly, Cornelius Patrick O'Sullivan, Maria Cunningham, John Spillane, Laura O'Leary, Claire Jenkins, Gearóid Ó Cíobháin, Kate Moylan, Quinton Reilly, Elinor Murphy, Phil Grieve, Nghia Mai, Shane Clifford, Luke Benson, Ross McCarney, Ryan Carrick, Sean Flaherty, Paul Hoey, Paul Reid, Mark Cantan, Bláithín de Burca, Breda Hegarty

Added Screening.

When amateur historian Catherine Corless begins examining records from a former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway, she stumbles upon evidence pointing towards a deeply troubling past. Refusing to let the questions go, she embarks on a painstaking investigation, putting her in conflict with the Church, State, and local town. As official resistance mounts, and unsettling discoveries emerge, her determination challenges powerful institutions, exposing a hidden chapter of Ireland's past that many would rather keep hidden. From the award-winning team of director Frank Berry, writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Element Pictures, Big Red Films, El Paso Pictures and Port Pictures.

Director: Frank Berry
Writer: Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Producers: Liam Neeson, Jules Daly, Chelsea Morgan Hoffmann, Andrew Lowe, Ed Guiney, Martina Niland

This year's Closing Film will be the European premiere of Edward Burns' sports comedy, Finnegan's Foursome, which was shot on location in Ireland. Two rival brothers, along with their adult children, travel to Ireland to scatter their late father's ashes in all the places he loved, and to continue the beloved family tradition of competing for the Finnegan's Cup. What begins as a clash of egos, old grudges, and comic misadventures, turns into a week of unlikely bonding and hard-won warmth, as they all vie for the cup, each with their own personal reasons to prove themselves within the family. Written, directed by, and starring Edward Burns (The Bothers McMullen, She's the One), Finnegan's Foursome is a warm and funny story about family, forgiveness, and the quiet realisation that, like golf, life rarely goes as planned – but is always worth playing through.

Post-screening discussion will follow

Director: Edward Burns
Writer: Edward Burns
Producers: Aaron Lubin, Ellen Schwartz
Cast: Edward Burns, Brian d'Arcy James, Erica Hernadez, Brian Muller, Ian McIhinney, Stuart Graham

In this interactive animated VR experience, we walk in the shoes of a 72-year-old pianist living with dementia. A Long Goodbye is a poetic experience of two lovers who shared a life together. Winner of the Venice Immersive Achievement Prize.

Directed by: Kate Voet and Victor Maes

The VR film BODIES OF WATER invites you to hold your breath and let yourself be transported and transformed. It takes you underwater for an immersive experience of an uncommon and otherwise inaccessible contemporary dance.

Directed by: Chélanie Beaudin-Quintin, Caroline Laurin-Beaucage

Ito Meikyū is inspired by Japanese art and literature, inviting the spectator to wander through a labyrinth composed of fractal architectures, inhabited by plants, objects, animals, humans, patterns, and calligraphy. Winner of the Venice Immersive Grand Prize.

Directed by: Boris Labbé

Mirage is an interactive VR experience inspired by the artist's daughter's struggles with depression and anxiety. Set in a desert landscape, it invites the audience to embark on an immersive journey through the young girl's mind.

Directed by: Naima Karim and Aleena Hanif

Samuel Beckett's Not I is reimagined as an immersive VR installation, where a hyperreal digital mouth confronts the viewer with a torrent of speech. Tactile costume deepens immersion, blurring theatre, virtuality and embodied presence.

Directed by: Nicholas Johnson

A 20-minute single player immersive VR experience that places users inside the body of Zoraan, a British-born Sikh woman navigating menopause amidst climate collapse and the ruins of colonial medicine.

Directed by: Deepa Mann-Kler

A powerful VR documentary where lost objects and spaces are recreated in collaboration with people affected by the 2022 floods in Australia. We hear from three people - Marina, Antoinette and Tom, in their own words as they share their stories of living through a flood, separated by thousands of kilometres but connected by shared experience.

Directed by: Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine

Immerse yourself in three surreal worlds: an endless disco in hell, a shimmering strip club, and a macabre dance of death. While dancing side by side each other in the real space, everyone is trapped in their own digital euphoric trip.

Directed by: Fabio Thieme