IFI ANNOUNCES A SPECIAL SERIES OF IFI TALKS ON THE COMPLEXITIES OF CANCEL CULTURE AND CONTROVERSY IN THE FILM INDUSTRY

THE IRISH FILM INSTITUTE (IFI), DUBLIN
ANNOUNCES A SPECIAL SERIES OF IFI TALKS
ON THE COMPLEXITIES OF CANCEL CULTURE AND CONTROVERSY IN THE FILM INDUSTRY 

AFTER THE MONSTER:
CINEMA, ART &
ACCOUNTABILITY

Commencing with the first event in a year-long
four-part series on Thursday, April 16 at the IFI

TICKETS FOR PART 1 ON SALE NOW: 
IFI.IE/FILM/AFTER-THE-MONSTER-PART-I/

Images free to use across media can be downloaded HERE

THURSDAY, 2 APRIL 2026: The Irish Film Institute (IFI), Dublin today announces After the Monster: Cinema, Art & Accountability, a four-part IFI Talks series taking place throughout this year examining one of the most pressing and uncomfortable questions in contemporary culture: what do we do with art made by problematic creators? 

As part of the IFI’s ongoing commitment to film discourse, this series will bring together writers, journalists, academics, and filmmakers to explore the emotional, ethical, institutional, and historical dimensions of engaging with difficult work. Across these inter-connected IFI Talks events, After the Monster invites audiences to confront the tension between admiration and accountability, looking at what we do with the work of problematic creators, from audience experience, to the impact on collaborators, to exhibition, and the ethics of preservation and legacy. 

Can we admire art made by people we find morally objectionable? Does knowing change viewing? Should it? Is “separating art from the artist” a fantasy or a useful boundary? How do memory, nostalgia, and personal identity complicate refusal? How do we continue to love the art made by problematic artists? 

Opening the series, After The Monster Part 1: Cinema, Art and Accountability takes some of the themes and observations found in author Claire Dederer’s book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma as a starting point. Perhaps the most personal and psychological of the four events, this entry point will focus on the viewer, their identity as a fan, their relationship with art, and the contradictions that arise when a beloved work or artist becomes the subject of scandal.  

The evening will feature a virtual keynote from Dederer, followed by a panel discussion with writer Dave Rudden, novelist and podcaster Sophie White, and moral philosopher Farbod Akhlaghi, hosted by series curator Roe McDermott. Together they’ll explore admiration, memory, and moral unease, asking whether it’s possible, or even desirable, to separate the art from the artist. 

Through examples spanning cinema and beyond, from Manhattan and The Pianist to wider artistic figures such as Michael Jackson and Caravaggio, this first discussion will call into question the internal negotiations audiences make when confronted with the moral failings of artists they admire. 

Commenting on the series, Series Curator Roe McDermott said: 

“What I’m seeking from the After the Monster series is open, honest conversations about how we live with art that becomes morally complicated. The opening event, looking at Monsters and the Fan’s Dilemma, focuses on the emotional experience of being a fan, and what happens when that identity is destabilised. Art has the power to wrap itself around memory, desire, selfhood, and identity, and I’m intrigued by how our identities are unsettled when a creator we admire is revealed to have caused harm. The question becomes how our sense of self and ethics are shaped not only by the art that moves us, but by what we do with knowledge that challenges us. Across our other events, we’ll explore not just individual responses, but wider questions of collaboration, curation, and cultural memory – how institutions respond, how audiences make choices, and what it means to carry difficult art forward rather than resolve it.” 

Commenting on the series, IFI Head of Cinema Programming David O’Mahony added: 

“At the Irish Film Institute, we believe it is essential that cultural institutions continually examine and reflect on their programming ethos, particularly in an era shaped by cancel culture. This series of talks creates a vital space for open, critical discourse, allowing us to engage thoughtfully with complex questions around context, responsibility, and the role of cinema in public discourse.” 

About the Series 

While the opening event focuses on the experience of the audience, the following events in the After the Monster: Cinema, Art and Accountability series expand outward, examining wider perspectives and implications in this context: 

• After the Monster Part 2: Collateral Damage: When One Person’s Cancellation Reshapes a Whole Film considers the collective nature of filmmaking, exploring how controversy surrounding one person can impact the dozens or even hundreds of collaborators behind a film. 

• After the Monster Part 3: Context & Choice – How We Program, Present, and Watch Problematic Cinema turns to institutions, interrogating how cinemas and festivals decide what to screen, the ethics of programming controversial work, and how to frame it responsibly. 

• After the Monster Part 4: Cinema as Memory: History, Legacy & the Films We Can’t Erase addresses preservation and legacy, asking what is lost – culturally and historically – when problematic works are removed from circulation and how to acknowledge the harm embedded in these films. 

Together, the four events offer a layered exploration of accountability in film, moving from the audience’s personal response to industry impact, institutional responsibility, and historical memory.  

Each event will look at its specific angle through a series of core questions and in reference to key film examples, featuring a range of guests and panelists in untangling the complexities and nuances of this wide-ranging subject. 

The series will take place throughout 2026 (with further dates to be confirmed, as a special strand within IFI Talks, regularly programmed discussions around film which feature special guest speakers as part of the IFI’s core commitment to film discourse. 

NOW BOOKING 

Book now for After The Monster Part 1: Cinema, Art and Accountability via https://ifi.ie/film/after-the-monster-part-i/ or via IFI Box Office in-person or over the phone via 01 679 5744. Tickets are €5.00. 

BIOS 

Roe McDermott, Series Curator 

Roe McDermott is a writer, journalist, academic, and film critic whose work appears in The Irish Times, Hot Press, The Sunday Times, and Image, alongside personal essays in The Rumpus, The Coven, and Khora. A Fulbright scholar, she holds MAs in Journalism, Sexuality Studies, and Creative Writing. An unabashed lover of films, books and pop culture, Roe is frequent contributor to national radio and TV on culture and politics and her work often explores the intersection of art, identity, and social justice. 

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: 

CLAIRE DEDERER 

Claire Dederer is the award-winning and best-selling author of three books: Monsters, Love & Trouble, and Poser. Monsters was a New York Times Notable and named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, The Sunday Times, Fresh Air, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and many others. Dederer has written for The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Nation, Vogue, and many other publications. She is the recipient of The Chowdhury Prize in Literature, The Los Angeles Times-Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, and a Lannan Foundation residency. She lives in Seattle with her sweetheart and is the proud mom of two grown-up humans. 

PANELLISTS: 

DAVE RUDDEN 

Dave Rudden is the author of multiple series for adults and young people, including Knights of the Borrowed Dark, Tales of Darkisle, and The Sunday Times-bestselling Sister Wake, as well as works for screen and stage. A Creative Fellow in UCD, he has brought talks and writing workshops to hundreds of schools, universities, festivals and one literary death match. 

FARBOD AKHLAGHI 

Farbod Akhlaghi is Assistant Professor in Moral Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. Before Trinity, he was Stipendiary Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge and Graduate Development Scholar at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. He received his DPhil (PhD) in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, studying first at Oriel College, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, and moving in his final year to take up his position at St Anne’s College, with further funding from the Aristotelian Society. Before Oxford, he received degrees in philosophy from the Universities of Reading, St Andrews, Stirling, and Cambridge. His primary research interests are in moral philosophy and metaphysics, with wider interests including the philosophy of religion, culture, epistemology, and the history of philosophy. He is particularly interested in the nature of morality, the ethics of major life choices, and what we are doing when we do philosophy. 

SOPHIE WHITE 

Sophie White is a novelist, essayist and podcaster from Dublin. She also holds a First-Class Honours degree in Sculpture from NCAD. She is the author of eight books. Her first four books, Recipes for a Nervous Breakdown (Gill, 2016), Filter This (Hachette, 2019), Unfiltered (Hachette, 2020) and The Snag List (Hachette, 2022) have been bestsellers and award nominees. Her fifth book, the bestselling memoir Corpsing (Tramp Press, 2021), was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction. Her sixth book, Where I End (Tramp Press, 2022) was described as “brilliantly visceral” by The Guardian and “exquisite and disturbing, brutish and beautifully crafted” by The Irish Times. It won the Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. Her seventh book and fifth novel, My Hot Friend (Hachette, 2023) won the An Post Irish book Award for Popular Fiction. Her latest book, Such A Good Couple was a bestseller and was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award. Sophie writes a weekly column ‘Nobody Tells You’ for The Sunday Independent LIFE magazine and her journalism has been nominated for numerous media awards. She also co-hosts the chart-topping comedy podcasts, Stop The Madness and The Creep Dive. 

SUPPORT

The IFI acknowledges the support of the Arts Council.