THE DANCE at Irish Film Festival London 2021.

Irish Film Festival London returns to venues & online (17 to 21 NOV 2021).

Irish Film Festival London (#IFFL2021) returns for its 10th edition with a packed programme of screenings, Q&As, industry workshops & activities across venues & online (17 to 21 NOV 2021).

By RADIANT CIRCUS // Twitter @radiantcircus / Instagram @radiantcircus

Celebrating its 10th edition, Irish Film Festival London returns from 17 to 21 NOV 2021 and, like many film festivals in our current climate, is pursuing a blended format this year.

Online activities include NORTHERN IRELAND: 100 YEARS OF HAPPINESS, a special archive film which streams from London after its live debut at the Belfast Film Festival. This newly commissioned project assembles hundreds of clips of people in the north of Ireland and promises “nodes of desire, knots of yearning… a journey in sound and image through Northern Irish pleasure centres.”

Other online attractions include Tomás Seoighe’s feature THE QUEEN VS PATRICK O’DONNELL (2021) and Teresa Lavina’s documentary UNTOLD SECRETS (2021) about the experiences of Irish institution survivors, focusing on the life and upbringing of Anne Silke. All online attractions stream for the duration of the festival.

The in-venue programme launches with an opening gala screening of ARRACHT aka Monster (d. Tom Sullivan, 2019) at Riverside Studios (17 NOV 20:00), an Irish language feature that was Ireland’s selection for Best Foreign language category at the Academy Awards last year. Other IRL highlights include:

  • Mark Cousins’ THE STORY OF LOOKING (2021), which is both a highly personal account of the filmmaker’s lockdown journey to receiving surgery to restore his own vision and an exploration of the role that visual experience plays in our individual and collective lives (18 NOV 17:00 at Riverside Studios).
  • Two short film programmes, A Haon featuring “beautifully creepy animation, hard-hitting drama and high flying comedy” (18 NOV 17:00 at Riverside Studios), and A Dó featuring dramas, thrillers, comedies and documentaries that “demonstrate the storytelling talent of a new generation” (21 NOV 17:00 at Riverside Studios).
  • Fresh from its outing at BFI London Film Festival, Pat Collins’s documentary THE DANCE (2021 – main featured image) an observational film about the making of improvised dance piece by renowned choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan, MÁM (20 NOV 16:00 at Bertha DocHouse).
  • Philip Doherty’s feature debut REDEMPTION OF A ROGUE (2020), a ‘bible-black’ comedy about a prodigal son returning to his home town to seek salvation for his sins (21 NOV 17:30 at Genesis Cinema).

Closing night gala comes in the form of Rachel Carey’s DEADLY CUTS (2021), a Dublin set comedy which has turned out to be Ireland’s highest grossing box office film this year: “set in a working-class Dublin hair salon where the stylists become accidental vigilantes and community heroes as they take on the gang members and gentrifiers threatening their community” (21 NOV 20:00 at Riverside Studios).

Industry sessions all take place at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith and include: Funding Your Film, Irish Storytelling Today, Finding a Producer (all 18 NOV), Writing For Genre, Directing Your Debut Feature, Directing Actors (all 19 NOV), The Explosion of Irish Documentary, Meet the Festival Programmers, and Working With Archive (all 20 NOV). The Irish Film Awards 2021 take place at the Embassy of Ireland and are by invitation only (19 NOV).

THE DANCE at Irish Film Festival London 2021.

Irish Film Festival London screens in venues & online from 17 to 21 NOV 2021 & is booking now!

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*THE SMALL PRINT: Opinions author’s own. // As accurate as we could make it. Apologies for any errors. Updates & corrections will be made to the online version only. // Event dates/times/formats are subject to change by the venue/organiser. Events may already be sold out at the time of posting, so please click quickly. // We try to list as many original format screenings as we can (8 to 70MM), but sometimes formats change due to age of the print, availability, logistics etc, so please check ahead with your venue if the format is your thing. // All images are used in the spirit of fair use for reporting & review – no ownership is implied or intended / unless otherwise credited to RADIANT CIRCUS as the original rights holder. We will remove any images immediately upon request – just get in touch. // We don’t filter our listings by age/certification: all readers & subscribers should therefore be 18+. // Finally, we always try to follow The Carny Code by “not screwing up anyone else’s game”, but everyone can make mistakes… If something does go wrong, we will always do our best to put it right. //.