DECEMBER 2024 AT THE IFI

November 28th, 2024: This December, the Irish Film Institute returns with a jam-packed programme of carefully curated, thought-provoking and all-round entertaining film experiences. From exciting new international releases, which signal a welcome return to awards season, and beloved classics, to our final festival of 2024 – the IFI Kinopolis Polish Film Festival, bringing the absolute best of contemporary and classic Polish cinema to our audiences.

December sees Ireland’s national cinema and the home of film in Ireland present rarely seen gems from the IFI Irish Film Archive, a great selection of special interest films, member and film club events, and experimental pieces.

While you visit, why not indulge in our special Christmas Menu at the IFI Café Bar, and browse the huge selection of books, films, and gifts available at the IFI Film Shop, perfect for stocking-filling or just as a little treat for yourself. And remember, film buffs nationwide can explore a host of incredible Irish and world cinema from the comfort of the couch on IFI@Home.

Tickets for new releases and special events are on sale from the IFI Box Office on (01) 6793477 and from www.ifi.ie, as per the IFI’s Weekly Schedule. Online rentals from IFI@Home are available at www.ifihome.ie.

ENDS.

For further information and high-res images, please contact Casey Hynes (chynes@irishfilm.ie) at the IFI Press Office.

December Programme Highlights

IFI Special Events
Sunday 1st
Join us at the IFI for a special screening of Endurance, a documentary chronicling the stories of two Antarctic expeditions, separated by over a century, directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin (Free Solo, The Rescue), and Natalie Hewit. In a legendary feat of leadership and perseverance, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton kept his crew of 27 men alive for over a year despite the loss of their ship in frigid pack ice. Over a century later, a team of modern-day explorers sets out to find the sunken ship. This one-off screening will be introduced by historian Liam Maloney.

Monday 9th
Women in Film and Television Ireland (WFTI), in partnership with the IFI and supported by Coimisiún na Meán and Screen Ireland, will present their annual short film showcase, celebrating the breadth and strength of work by new and established women filmmakers in and from Ireland today. The programme is followed by an awards ceremony with prizes for Best Writer, Actor, Documentary, Cinematography, and Best Film.

Saturday 14th
With Luca Guadagnino’s Queer released on Friday 13th (read on below for more info), we invite audiences to savour, perhaps for the first time, the unique flavour of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, an earlier adaptation of a William S. Burroughs’s novel, also featuring William Lee – the author’s alter-ego – played here by Peter Weller, on hiatus from Robocop duties.

Sunday 15th
We welcome director Dónal Ó Céilleachair (The Camino Voyage) to the IFI to present his new feature documentary Are We One, which traces the transmission of Zen meditation through the life’s work of Irish-American Jesuit Zen Master Robert Kennedy. It will be preceded by short film Seeding the Future, and followed by a a Q&A with Dónal Ó Céilleachair and executive producer and contributor Miriam Healy, hosted by writer Michael Harding.

Saturday 21st
The IFI is delighted to present a special Ciné Concert dedicated to the works of amateur filmmaker Flora Kerrigan. A keen member of the Cork Cine Society in the late ’50s and ’60s, Kerrigan crafted animation and live-action shorts on 8mm film, earning international accolades. Following her relocation to the UK in the late ’60s, her work faded into obscurity until it was recently rediscovered through a collaboration between the IFI Irish Film Archive and Maynooth University – and restored with support from Association des Cinémathèques Européennes and the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme. Her works will be accompanied by new compositions by renowned avant-garde free-improvisational pianist Paul G. Smyth and double bass virtuoso John Edwards.

Friday 27th – Tuesday 31st
We are delighted to re-present the IFI’s best performing Irish films of 2024 – giving you another chance to catch something you may have missed, or to come back and enjoy one of your favourite Irish films one more time.Our Top 5 films for the year, which include Irish language, documentary, and F-rated endeavours, nicely demonstrate the diversity of the year’s programme: Kneecap, That They May Face The Rising Sun, Poor Things, Mrs Robinson, and Baltimore.

IFI Regulars
Weekly, Monday, Wednesday & Saturday
This month’s Archive at Lunchtime programme, Keep The Faith, presents two short films, Radharc’s “Jack” and “It’s Meant to Be Boring”, tying in succinctly with our special screening of Are We One and new release Chasing The Light, and screening for free at lunchtime Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays in December.

Sunday, December 1st
The Mystery Matinee is back! Let us take the hassle out of choosing the movie. Grab a ticket, sink into your comfy cinema seat and prepare to enjoy a surprise film. Will it be a brand-new release hot off the presses, or a forgotten cult classic that you missed on the big screen? One thing’s for sure, it will always be a brilliant and unexpected piece of quality cinema, with tickets costing just €6.50 for IFI Members, and €7.00 for non-members.

Wednesday 4th
Continuing the IFI Irish Focus strand, we are delighted to present the Dublin premiere of Few Can See, a bold reimagining of Irish broadcast history from artist Frank Sweeney, which explores the legacy of Irish and British censorship of the conflict in the north of Ireland. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Frank Sweeney and Betty Purcell, hosted by film critic Ruairí McCann.

Tuesday 10th
The EAFFI Discoveries (East Asia Film Festival Ireland) strand returns with master filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu’s Record of a Tenement Gentleman, his first film after the Second World War which follows a homeless boy as he is taken in reluctantly by a middle-aged widow.

Thursday 12th
Our From The Vaults strand returns this month with Kirsten Sheridan’s remarkable feature debut Disco Pigs, adapted by Enda Walsh (co-writer, Small Things Like These) from his stage play and starring Cillian Murphy, who reprises his 1996 stage role, opposite Elaine Cassidy as Pig and Runt respectively.

Tuesday 22nd
Each month, we invite a special guest to choose a film to show on the big screen. For this month’s The Bigger Picture, we screen Paul Schrader’s visually stunning portrait Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, chosen by William Reynolds, freelance writer and film programmer with Queer Asian Pride Ireland.

Wednesday 18th & Friday 27th
Wild Strawberries, our monthly film club for over 55s, presents The Holdovers, a new addition to the roster of Christmas classics directed by Alexander Payne. All are welcome to join us for this friendly and inclusive gathering, with complimentary tea and coffee served pre-screening.

Sunday 24th
This month’s IFI Family presents a delightful double bill of Julia Donaldson & Alex Scheffler adaptations, Tabby McTat and The Highway Rat, which follow the musical adventures of London street cat and busker Fred, and the travels of a very greedy rat, in search of buns, treats, and all things sweet – followed by some Christmas colouring fun in the IFI foyer after the screening.Tickets are just €7.00, with a Family of 4 ticket available for €23.00!

Festivals
Thursday 5th – Sunday 8th
The IFI Kinopolis Polish Film Festival returns from Thursday, December 5th to Sunday, December 8th, with this year’s strong line-up of films serving as a snapshot of not just the best of new Polish cinema, but also of a society that, like that of Ireland, has become increasingly diversified and enriched by the arrival, acceptance, and integration of the richness of other cultures into their own. The festival opens this year with Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With The Needle, an austere, gripping, superb film set in WWI Denmark, and followed by a Q&A with screenwriter Line Langebek Knudsen. Other screenings at the festival include Maria Zbąska’s directorial feature debut It’s Not My Film, followed by a Q&A with the director; Jan P. Matuszynski’s Minghun, followed by a Q&A with lead actor Marcin Dorociński; the harrowing but important Ukraine-set People, introduced by actress Afina Ostapenko; Marcin Koszałka’s White Courage, followed by a Q&A with lead actor Sandra Drzymalska, who will also join us for a Q&A following the festival’s closing screening of Simona Kossak; Ireneusz Grzyb’s The Dog, a tense, claustrophobic allegory reminiscent of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth; and a fortieth anniversary screening of Polish classic Sexmission, in memory of the late, great Jerzy Stuhr. Full programme schedule, tickets, and more information are available now at ifi.ie/kinopolis/.

IFI@Home
A world of incredible Irish and international cinema awaits in the IFI@Home library, huge collections of classic and new films to rent and stream from the comfort of your couch. New releases and more available this December:

Available throughout December
To mark the year’s end, we’re delighted to honour and celebrate our top performing Irish films on IFI@Home over the last 12 months, a selection which demonstrates the breadth of IFI audience interest and the growing diversity of stories being told by Irish filmmakers today. We invite you to catch up with any of the top 5 you haven’t yet seen, or to treat yourself to a repeat of one of your favourites, which include: An Cailín Ciúin; Lies We Tell; Róise & Frank; That They May Face The Rising Sun; and Ballywalter.

Streaming now
Alice Lowe’s Timestalker, her sophomore directorial effort which sees her take the role of Agnes, a seventeenth-century spinster who falls in love at first sight with a heretic bound for execution, and finds herself being killed time and time again in this time-hopping, unusual take on the rom-com. Directed by Pascal Plante, Red Rooms is a psychological thriller which presents a chilly, disturbing portrayal of one woman’s seeming obsession with a serial killer on trial. Caroline Lindy’s debut feature Your Monster, following its exciting screening at this year’s IFI Horrorthon, and its premiere in the Midnight section of this year’s Sundance.

From Monday 2nd
Daniel Kokotajlo’s follow up to Apostasy, Starve Acre, stars Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark as a once-happy couple whose life is thrown into turmoil when their young son Owen starts acting strangely. The latest from director Quentin Dupieux, The Second Act, is an absurdist tale, starring Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, and Louis Garrel as actors trying to escape the film they’re making.

Irish & International Film Releases
From Friday 6th
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, director Rungano Nyoni’s provocative follow up to I Am Not a Witch which witnesses the unearthing of a Zambian family’s buried secrets as they prepare for a funeral; and Guy Maddin’s typically idiosyncratic political satire Rumours, co-directed with brothers Evan and Galen Johnson and starring a terrific cast headed by Cate Blanchett and Charles Dance as G7 summit leaders faced with a global catastrophe.

From Friday 13th
Chasing The Light, a new documentary from Maurice O’Brien which follows the story of charismatic hippie couple Peter and Harriet Cornish as they established a spiritual haven which would eventually blossom into Dzogchen Beara; perennial IFI classic It’s A Wonderful Life, presented in stunning 4K; Luca Guadagnino’s latest feature Queer, starring the combined talents of Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig; and Timm Kröger’s The Universal Theory, a mind-bending, bizarre conspiracy set in 1962, against the backdrop of the Swiss Alps.

From Friday 27th
How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, a heartwarmingly funny film which follows a young man as her cares for his grandmother, in a bid to inherit her wealth as a reward for his newfound devotion; Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved classic Spirited Away, beautifully presented on the big screen once more; and The Order, a brilliantly directed, propulsive true life crime drama from Justin Kurzel which offers disturbing resonance with contemporary concerns about the rise of the far right across the globe.

IFI Film Shop
This December
Just in time for the gift giving season, why not give the gift of cinema to a loved one with a purchase from the IFI Film Shop? 2024 cinema releases coming to the IFI Film Shop this month include the beautiful My Favourite Cake, the long-anticipated Godzilla Minus One, and The Outrun, starring our own Saoirse Ronan. Treat yourself to a sumptuous classic film over the holiday season, with new additions to the IFI Film Shop such as The Great Escape in 4K; Fellini Satyricon from director Federico Fellini; Jean Rollin’s Requiem for a Vampire and The Escapees, presented in 4K; a limited edition release of gorgeous animation The Secret of Nimh; and the Criterion Collection’s release of William Wyler’s Funny Girl. December presents the perfect opportunity to deep dive into the works of filmmakers, classic and contemporary, so why not spend your time off delving into the early works of Alfred Hitchcock, available in the Hitchcock – The Beginning collection; the mind-bending works of Béla Tarr, presented in a limited edition collection by Curzon; or some of the provocative and enduring work created by Luis Buñuel, with new 4K restorations of Viridiana, The Exterminating Angel, and Simon of The Desert available in Nothing Is Sacred – Three Heresies By Luis Buñuel. All this and more at the IFI Film Shop – in-person at the IFI in Temple Bar, and online worldwide!

IFI is principally funded by the Arts Council.