Irish Film Institute -International Film Directory

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…

Shem the Penman Sings Again

Padraig Trehy, 80 minutes, 2015

A new exploration of the actual and much-fabled friendship between Joyce and Irish tenor, John McCormack. McCormack inspires the character of Shaun the Post in Joyce’s famously ‘unreadable’ final novel Finnegans Wake, in which Joyce portrayed himself as Shaun’s lowly…

Small Things Like These

Tim Mielants, 98 minutes, 2024

An unassuming man in 1980’s Ireland must grapple with his conscience in the face of an overwhelming moment of insight in Tim Mielants supremely confident adaptation of Claire Keegan’s Booker Prize-nominated 2021 novella. The setting is New Ross, Wexford, in…

The Snapper

Stephen Frears, 91 minutes, 1993

Heart-warming and universal, The Snapper sees a family come together to face the challenges of an unplanned pregnancy. Twenty years old and single, Sharon Curley (Tina Kellegher) finds herself stunning her family, including father Dessie (Colm Meaney) with the news…

That They May Face the Rising Sun

Pat Collins, 107 minutes, 2023

An adaptation of the final novel from John McGahern, one of Ireland’s greatest writers, That They May Face The Rising Sun is a lyrical celebration of the everyday. Joe (Barry Ward) and Kate Ruttledge (Anna Bederke) have returned from London…

Translating Ulysses

Aylin Kuryel & Fırat Yücel, 70 minutes, 2023

Kawa Nemir is a walking dictionary of the Kurdish language, wandering from one exile to another, retaining and never forgetting every new word and idiom of his language, wondering how to transfer this collective memory onto paper. James Joyce's Ulysses…

Ulys

Tim Booth, 6 minutes, 1997

Boldly attempting to sum up in a few short minutes James Joyce’s famously complex, Ulysses, Ulys celebrates Dublin’s most renowned novelist. Slipping between narratives – Joyce bemoans the difficulty of writing whilst a publican recounts the novel’s events– but the…

Ulysses

Joseph Strick, 120 minutes, 1967

American director Joseph Strick’s Academy-Award-nominated take on James Joyce’s Ulysses is unquestionably the most faithful screen adaptation of the revered and illustrious novel. The plot, such as it is, is iconic; Leopold Bloom (Milo O’Shea) goes about his daily business…

The Van

Stephen Frears, 100 minutes, 1996

Following on from The Commitments and The Snapper, The Van is the third instalment of ‘The Barrytown Trilogy’ and offers another look into the tragi-comic, working class lives of Barrytown’s residents. Here it is unemployed middle-aged men Larry (Colm Meaney)…

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