APRIL 2025 AT THE IFI

March 27th, 2025: This April, the Irish Film Institute offers up a jam-packed programme of carefully curated, thought-provoking and all-round entertaining film experiences. From highly-anticipated Irish releases, to a host of incredible special events, including the first part of our retrospective season dedicated to British director David Lean (with April’s selection all screening on 35mm), collaborative screenings with aemi, One Dublin One Book, and the LUX Audience Award, and the 1st edition of IBERSCREEN 2025, Ireland’s only Ibero-American film festival.

And remember, film buffs nationwide can explore a host of incredible Irish and world cinema from the comfort of the couch on IFI@Home, anywhere in the Republic of Ireland!

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.

April Programme Highlights

IFI Seasons
Saturday, April 5th – Wednesday, April 30th
Few British filmmakers have created a body of work as respected and influential as that of Sir David Lean (1908 – 1991), with seven of his 16 films seeing him Oscar-nominated (twice winning) in the category of Best Director. Starting as teaboy at Gaumont Studios, Lean worked his way up to editor on numerous features, including a number of Powell and Pressburger titles, before taking to the director’s chair. Moving from chamber pieces such as Brief Encounter (1945) to some of cinema’s greatest epics, including Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), Lean proved remarkably adept at creating indelible imagery, and never lost sight of the intimate human relationships at each film’s core, whatever its scale. This month’s selection, projecting entirely from 35mm, offers audiences the chance not just to experience some rare screenings, but also to see the films as they were always intended to be seen, on the big screen, and on celluloid. The season will continue in May.

This season has been supported by Expert Air. Tickets and full season programme are available on the IFI website; season bundles available in-person or by phone at IFI Box Office.

Festivals
Thursday 24th – Sunday 27th
From Thursday, April 24th to Sunday, April 27th, the Irish Film Institute hosts IBERSCREEN 2025, Ireland’s only Ibero-American Film Festival. Focusing on films with a socially relevant them, IBERSCREEN aims to make connections, and start conversations between audiences and filmmakers.Celebrating the rich and diverse cinematic voices of Ibero-America, the festival brings together the best films from countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Peru, and Colombia, showcasing stories that inspire, challenge, and captivate. From bold new voices to established auteurs, the programme highlights the depth of storytelling and the cultural vibrancy of the region.

Join us for an unforgettable journey through compelling narratives, groundbreaking documentaries, and visionary filmmaking. Whether you’re a cinephile or simply curious about the dynamic world of Ibero-American cinema, this festival is your gateway to discovering unique perspectives and powerful storytelling.

Tickets and full festival information are available on the IFI website; multi-film bundles available in-person or by phone at IFI Box Office.

IFI Regulars
Weekly, Monday, Wednesday & Saturday
This month’s Archive at Lunchtime programme, Dublin Can Be Heaven, presents two short pieces, Dublin of the Welcomes and Rex Roberts’s Dublin’s Fair City, screening for free at lunchtime Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays in April.

Thursday 3rd
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 Anna Biller’s supernatural horror comedy The Love Witch, chosen and introduced by The GALPAL Collective’s Lulit Luis.

Saturday 12th
Our From The Vaults strand returns this month, presented in partnership with One Dublin One Book, to screen Gerry Stembridge’s cult classic About Adam, romantic-comedy which wholly captures the free-spirited nature of Dublin in Celtic Tiger times starring Kate Hudson and Stuart Townsend. The film will be introduced by director, screenwriter, and novelist Gerry Stembridge. This event is free but ticketed. Tickets can be collected from IFI Box Office, booked online (€1.00 booking fee), or by phone (01 679 3477).

Sunday 20th
The Mystery Matinee returns! 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.

Friday 25th & Wednesday 30th
Wild Strawberries, our monthly film club for over 55s, presents Academy Award-winning feature Conclave. The screening on Wednesday 30th will be Open Captioned. Join us for this friendly and inclusive gathering, with complimentary tea and coffee served pre-screening!

Sunday 27th
This month’s IFI Family presents Peter Rabbit, featuring the voice talents of James Corden as the eponymous bunny, and starring Ireland’s own Domhnall Gleeson. Screening tickets are just €7.00, with a Family of 4 ticket available for €23.00!

Monday 28th
This month’s IFI Youth Panel selection is Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s ever-whimsical Amélie, featuring a strong visual style, fairytale-like narrative, and charming score by Yann Tiersen.

The IFI Youth Panel is an open, welcoming and accessible gathering of film fans, formed from our IFI 25 & Under cardholders, and all are welcome to join these dynamic monthly screening parties. IFI 25 & Under cardholders can avail of €5.00 tickets, 7 days a week – see more on our website.

Also on Monday 28th, our new strand, IFI Encounters, returns with new documentary Intercepted, which sees Ukrainian intelligence services intercept thousands of phone calls Russian soldiers made from the battlefield in Ukraine to their families and friends in Russia, painting a stark picture of the cruelty of war.

Tuesday 29th
Continuing the IFI Irish Focus strand, we are delighted to present The Cordelia Dream, Marina Carr’s play comes to life on screen, under Joe O’Byrne’s direction, with the mysterious and tense confrontation of Woman and Man, followed by a Q&A followed by a post-show discussion with Joe O’Byrne and Marina Carr hosted by Katy Hayes, Theatre Critic (Irish Independent).

IFI Special Events
Saturday 5th – Sunday 27th
Throughout April, the IFI will screen films nominated for the LUX Audience Award. Tickets are free of charge and can be obtained in person at the IFI or by calling IFI Box Office at 01 679 3477. The LUX Audience Award is presented every year by the European Parliament and the European Film Academy, in Partnership with the European Commission and Europa Cinemas. The award celebrates European cinema and its aims to raise awareness of Europe’s social, political, and cultural issues. The screening schedule is as follows, all films screening at 11am:

Saturday 5th: Dahomey
Saturday 12th & Sunday 27th: Animal
Saturday 19th: Flow

Monday 7th
The IFI welcomes aemi to our Temple Bar venue to present AT THE HEART OF THE REAL, a programme of four short films with an interest in how bodies connect to and through their environment, how nature seeps into us and in turn is made and corrupted by us. Made collaboratively in four disparate contexts – Dublin, Wicklow, Jamaica and Winnipeg – each film circles around ideas of community; ideas of home, ritual, friendship, myth and memory. Followed by a Q&A with filmmakers Eóin Heaney and Rik Higashikawa.

Sunday 13th
We’re delighted to present a special preview screening of Andreas Dresen’s From Hilde, With Love, biographical film about Hilde Coppi, who along with her husband Hans Coppi belonged to Red Orchestra, a German resistance group to Nazism. Screening ahead of its general release in May, the film will be followed by a Q&A with Andreas Dresen.

Thursday 17th
Take a journey with maverick musician Neil Young in personal, behind-the-scenes doc Neil Young: Coastal, as he cruises the coast on his recent solo tour. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker and Young’s wife, Daryl Hannah, the film offers a glimpse behind the curtain of this unguarded iconoclast, as he navigates a return to the stage post-Covid – from his everyday observations on the bus to his candid, wry banter with his audience.

Irish & International Film Releases
From Friday 4th
New Irish comedy Four Mothers, which follows Edward, who must balance plans for promotion of his soon-to-be-published novel with his responsibilities caring for his widowed mother Alma (Fionnula Flanagan), as he is suddenly responsible for his friends’ mothers as they attend a Pride festival abroad; Jed Hart’s tense, lean, blackly comic debut film Restless; and heartfelt, moving animation The Most Precious of Cargoes, directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist, Final Cut). The opening night screening of Restless on Friday 4th will be introduced by actor Barry Ward. The screening at 18.00 on Saturday 5th of Four Mothers will be followed by a Q&A with co-writer/director Darren Thornton and co-writer Colin Thornton.

Are you an IFI Friend? Join us for our next IFI Cinema Club discussion after the screening of The Most Precious of Cargoes at 18.30 on Tuesday, April 8th on the IFI Mezzanine!

From Friday 11th
IFI French Film Festival 2024 highlight Holy Cow, which sees young Totone turn over a new leaf and enter the world of Comte cheese making, in order to support his family; new documentary One to One: John & Yoko which focuses on an 18-month period when John Lennon and Yoko Ono fled a life of luxury in the UK for a relatively humble two-room apartment in New York’s West Village; and Uberto Pasolini’s The Return, starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.

From Friday 18th
Sins of Ireland, directed by Alex Fegan and a portrait of Ireland through the lens of the confession box; Peter Cattaneo’s The Penguin Lessons, starring Steve Coogan; and The opening night screening of Sins of Ireland on Friday 18th will be followed by a Q&A with Alex Fegan and Fr Chris O’Donnell, hosted by Patsy McGarry (Irish Times).

From Friday 25th
Highly-anticipated Irish language horror Fréwaka, starring Clare Monnelly and Bríd Ní Neachtain; and sensitive, moving, and meticulously crafted Julie Keeps Quiet, which tackles pertinent questions about the silence of women confronting a calculating abuser. The screening at 18.20 on Wednesday 23rd will be followed by Q&A with Clare Monnelly, Bríd Ní Neachtain, and director Aislinn Clarke.

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

Streaming now
Rita, the directorial debut of Paz Vega, is set in the summer of 1984 where seven-year-old Rita and her five-year-old brother, Lolo, live in a humble working-class neighbourhood with their parents; The Fabulous Four, which follows four older women (Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Megan Mullally), friends since college, as one of their number remarries; No Other Land, winner of the Best Documentary prize and Audience award in the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama section and a 2025 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film; IFI French Film Festival 2024 highlight Misericordia; and DIG! XX, the 20th anniversary extended edition of the seminal rock documentary DIG!.

From April 7th
New documentary Ernest Cole: Lost & Found, joint winner of the documentary prize, the L’Oeil d’or, at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, and accounting the life and work of Ernest Cole, a South African photographer who was the first to expose the horrors of apartheid to a world audience; and Bong Joon-ho’s latest feature Mickey 17, a sci-fi anti-fascist satire starring Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes, who takes a job on a newly colonised planet where he is to be an expendable, and will be ‘reprinted’ every time he dies completing a perilous task.

IFI Film Shop
This April
April means fools, showers, and brand new restorations, re-issues, and new releases! Blu-Rays coming to the IFI Film Shop this month include David Cronenberg’s The Brood and Scanners, Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of a Murder, Charlie Chaplin’s A Woman in Paris, Chet Baker’s Let’s Get Lost, Clint Eastwood’s A Fistful of Dollars, Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express, Kelly Reichardt’s River of Grass, Gene Hackman’s Night Moves, and Margaret Sullavan’s Little Man, What Now?. New releases coming this month include Maria, Nosferatu, A Real Pain, Hard Truths, A Complete Unknown, and more!

New books now available in the shop include In The Good Seats: Essays on Film, a lovingly presented collection from Irish publisher PVA, with contributions from Maggie Armstrong, Daisy Lafarge, Ian Malaney, Toye Oladinni, and Ali Smith.

If you missed our Ingmar Bergman season, we have a wonderful selection of Bergman Volume Blu-Ray box sets at the IFI Film Shop – with 4 volumes available in total, all including stunning restorations of the director’s work alongside special commentaries and features, courtesy of the BFI.

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.