Clones Film Festival has confirmed that a number of Irish premières will be included in the screening programme for this year’s festival, which takes place over the course of the October Bank Holiday weekend, from October 21st to 25^th.

 

 

This Lithuanian film ‘Balcony’ was produced by Juga Gluskineiene and directed by Giedre Beinoriute. Set in a bleak 1980s Soviet housing project, the movie tells the story of two children who strike up a special friendship across their balconies.
This evocative coming of age story is beautifully told and will appeal to adults and children alike. The film is beautifully shot, and the settings will invokes huge nostalgia for anyone who grew up in soviet Lithuania.

 

 

Another exciting première for the festival is ‘Impolex’, directed by Alex Ross Perry.

This film defies categorisation being, according to the director, "An unjustifiable blend of the bare-bones realism of John Ford's WWII documentaries and the glorious stupidity of Abbott and Costello".

It attracted considerable critical interest when it was screened this year at CineVegas, The Chicago Underground Film Festival and the Melbourne Underground Film Festival where it won awards for Best International Film and Best Foreign Male Actor.

 

 

This is a wonderfully intelligent and gentle film about how we deal with the inevitability of death, and how we confront it.

While there are few more important subjects for a film to tackle, its is a subject that is rarely discussed at all in western society. In Japan, things are quite different. Trudi (Hannelore Eisner) has always longed to go to Japan. As the film opens, she is told that her husband (Elmar Wepper) is terminally ill. It's agonisingly painful for her - they have spent their whole adult lives together and she can't imagine life without him - yet she chooses not to tell him, to preserve his enjoyment of life and travel . In exploring his relationship with a young Japanese girl, this film cleverly avoids being just another culture clash story. Spurning stereotypes the film instead explores how the meeting of different cultures can enrich both.

 

 

This is an extraordinary series of 15 shorts films which Myles Dungan of RTE described as “one of the funniest things I have seen in years.” Featuring exclusive footage of real Butcher Boys and Brenda Fricker polishing her Oscar it intimately explores diverse aspects of Dublin life and gives remarkably authentic insights into the lives of the community. 

 

IIn addition to the exciting mix of programmed screenings, Clones Film Festival is also giving local film enthusiasts a chance to witness script development up close and personal. The festival is delighted to be hosting a public reading of the script of the film 'The Man', a screenplay written by festival patron Pat McCabe and Flat Lake impresario Kevin Allen, which is about to go into production and should be released in 2010. The reading will take place on Friday the 23^rd of October and features a host local acting talent (James Sheerin, Margaret Rafferty & Peter Trant, and others). Followed by a Q&A session with Pat and Kevin (the men behind 'The Man'), this event offers a rare opportunity to see and hear how script development works in the real world of film.