This film screened 15th January 2018.

The screening will be introduced by Una Begley, Board member, First Fortnight, and we will also be screening two films in association with the festival in January 2018. 

Robert Redford’s directorial début stars Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore as an upper-middle-class Chicago couple grieving for the death of their eldest son in a boating accident.

Their younger son, memorably played by Timothy Hutton, blames himself for the tragedy and is wracked by guilt, though a lifeline is provided by the empathetic interventions of a psychiatrist played by Judd Hirsch. A critical and commercial success, Ordinary People won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, while Redford and Hutton both won Academy Awards for their respective débuts.

Notes by David O’Mahony