IFI DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL 2020 STARTS TONIGHT!

September 21st 2020: The 18th IFI Documentary Festival begins tonight, online nationwide at IFI@Home, with the Irish premiere of Ron Howard’s Rebuilding Paradise. The film, which focuses on the devastating 2018 Camp Fire that almost destroyed the Californian town of Paradise, includes an exclusive virtual Q&A with Oscar winner Howard. Festival films cost just €7.50 each for a three-day rental with great value multi-film packages also available. Full details from www.ifihome.ie.

Following the closure of the IFI in Temple Bar last weekend due to the Level 3 COVID-19 restrictions, the festival has moved online, meaning film fans across the country can now enjoy the best of new Irish and international documentary filmmaking. A number of films in the festival will have filmmaker Q&As included as bonus material.

Irish films to feature as part of this year’s selection include two World Premieres: the Director’s Cut of Gillian Marsh’s charming The Funeral Director, featuring Sligo undertaker David McGowan; and Christopher Kepple’s A Call to Arts, focusing on the life and artistic legacy of artist Helen Hooker and her husband, Irish revolutionary and historian, Ernie O’Malley.

Also showing will be the Irish Premiere of Outcry and Whisper, a new film from directors Trish McAdam, Wen Hai, and Zeng Jinyan, which examines women’s struggles in the private and public spheres in both China and Hong Kong. Pat Collins’s portrait of the renowned American folklorist and ethnologist, Henry Glassie: Field Work, will also screen, as will Gretta Ohle’s Tomorrow is Saturday, an intimate portrait of acclaimed artist Seán Hillen. Dublin-based director Nino Tropiano’s Samira’s Dream follows a young Zanzibari woman whose dreams of becoming a primary school teacher are challenged by wider cultural obligations.

Deirdre Fishel’s Women in Blue focuses on Minneapolis’s first female police chief, Janeé Harteau, as she tries to reform the city’s force. Davy Rothbart’s 17 Blocks follows the life of a family in one of America’s most dangerous neighbourhoods, situated just 17 blocks from the US Capitol, while Elegance Bratton’s Pier Kids centres on a number of transgender people of colour at Christopher Street Pier in New York City.

Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent is the charming and irreverent story of an elderly man asked to go undercover in a Chilean nursing home; Benjamin Ree’s The Painter and the Thief examines the unlikely friendship between a Czech artist and the thief who stole two of her paintings; and Gentle Warriors, from director Marija Stonyte, follows three Lithuanian girls who voluntarily enlist in the country’s male-dominated military. Two films, Love Child and Stray, focus on very different experiences of life in Istanbul, one from the standpoint of a migrant couple who find themselves in bureaucratic limbo, and the other from the point of view of three stray dogs wandering the streets for food and shelter.

Elsewhere in the programme, director Ric Burns interviews Oliver Sacks, the late renowned neurologist in Oliver Sacks: His Own Life; Iryna Tsilyk’s turns her camera on a film-obsessed family in Ukraine for The Earth is Blue as an Orange; Réka Szabó’s intensely moving The Euphoria of Being features 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Éva Fahidi as she prepares a dance recital about her life; Martin Vetter goes behind-the-scenes at the World Economic Forum in Davos for The Forum; and Britni Harris’s Goff looks at the oft-forgotten legacy of one of America’s great 20th century architects, Bruce Goff.

The highly anticipated Irish shorts programme on Saturday 26th will feature powerful narratives and revealing film portraits in new work from Fiona Breen, Bryony Dunne, Jamie Goldrick, Paddy Hayes, Cara Holmes, Iseult Howlett, Ross McClean, and Gar O’Rourke; and a panel discussion, Something Old Something New: Use of Archival Extracts in New Work, will explore ethical, legal, artistic, and archival issues facing filmmakers.

Online screenings cost just €7.50 each for a three-day rental; great value multi-film bundles are also available – they can be found at https://www.ifihome.ie/collection/film-packages/. Registrations for the online archive panel are available at www.ifi.ie/docfest.

For more information on interview availability and high-res images, please contact Frances Wilde at the IFI Press Office (01 679 5744) or fwilde@irishfilm.ie.

The IFI is principally funded by the Arts Council. The IFI Documentary Festival is supported by RTÉ Supporting the Arts, Screen Scene, and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI).

FULL SCHEDULE

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21st
18.30 Opening Film: Rebuilding Paradise + virtual Q&A
20.30 The Earth Is as Blue as an Orange

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22nd
18.00 Gentle Warriors
18.30 A Call To Arts + virtual Q&A

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23rd
18.00 Samira’s Dream + virtual Q&A
18.30 Stray + virtual Q&A

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24th
18.00 The Forum
18.00 Goff
20.00 Outcry and Whisper + virtual Q&A
20.30 Love Child + virtual Q&A

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25th
15.00 Panel: Something Old, Something New
18.00 Pier Kids + virtual Q&A
18.00 Oliver Sacks: His Own Life + virtual Q&A
20.30 The Painter and the Thief + virtual Q&A

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26th
13.00 Irish Shorts Programme
14.30 Women in Blue
16.00 The Funeral Director + virtual Q&A
18.00 Henry Glassie: Field Work
20.30 17 Blocks + virtual Q&A

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27th
14.30 The Euphoria of Being
15.30 Tomorrow is Saturday + virtual Q&A
18.00 The Mole Agent