Irish Film Institute -International Film Directory

Santatorium

Gar O'Rourke, 90 minutes, 2025

IFI International [do not amend]: announced as Ireland's entry into the 2026 Academy Awards Best International Feature Film On the outskirts of Odesa, stands Kuyalnyk Sanatorium. Each summer, thousands of Ukrainians come here, drawn by Soviet-era therapies and the chance…

Saoirse?

George Morrison, 90 minutes, 1959

George Morrison’s sequel to Mise Éire, his acclaimed account of Irish history focussing on the lead up to the 1916 Rising and the the War of Independence, Saoirse? deals with the events of that war and its aftermath. The film…

Saving the Turf

Fiona Breen, 17 minutes, 2020

A man and his dog travel by tractor to a bog where turf and memories are ignited and the future pondered.

School Life

Neasa Ní Chianáin, 100 minutes, 2017

Hidden just outside the town of Kells in County Meath is an enchanting, worn and weathered country house now home to Headfort, Ireland’s only boarding school for primary school children. At its heart is a bemused elderly couple, John and…

Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens

Adam Low, 88 minutes, 2019

Six years after his unexpected death in 2013, Seamus Heaney’s wife Marie and their three children talk intimately about their family life and read the poems he wrote for them. His surviving brothers remember their childhood and the shared experiences…

Shellshock Rock

John T. Davis, 48 minutes, 1979

Exploring Northern Ireland’s 1970s punk scene, Shellshock Rock begins with teenagers explaining how punks’ non-conformist attitude offers, in the context of the Troubles, an anti-sectarian identity for those without a mainstream political agenda. Inviting both punks and public to speak…

Shelter Me

Zahara Moufid, 65 minutes, 2018

On the 16th of December 2016 a group of housing activists and trade unionists commandeered Apollo House, an empty Nama-controlled office block on Dublin's Poolbeg Street and opened a shelter for homeless people. Joined by well-known public figures, including film…

Shooting the Darkness

Tom Burke, 52 minutes, 2019

A powerful new documentary about the men who unwittingly became war photographers on the streets of their own Northern Irish towns. They did not leave home in search of war and adventure: the violence erupted around them. They expected a…

Shooting the Mafia

Kim Longinotto, 94 minutes, 2019

Sicilian Letizia Battaglia began a lifelong battle with the Mafia when she first pointed her camera at a brutally slain victim. A woman whose passions led her to eschew traditional family life and become a photojournalist, she found herself…

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