The curtain came down on the Festival last night with the World Premiere of Rachel Carey’s hilarious black comedy Deadly Cuts. The screening was a double celebration for Carey, who was announced during the Festival as winner of the Aer Lingus Discovery Award, along with Burschi Wojnar, Hazel Doupe and Saileóg O’Halloran. 

DFCC Awards

Also announced on the Closing Night were the hotly anticipated Dublin Film Critics Circle (DFCC) Awards, crowning Apples as Best Film, with the Best Irish Film award going to Tadhg O’Sullivan’s To The Moon.

Further DFCC accolades were awarded to: Lili Horvát (Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time) for Best Director; Joanna Scanlan (After Love) for Best Actress; Goran Bogdan (Father) for Best Actor; Lee Issac Chung (Minari) for Best Screenplay and Viktor Kosakovskiy and Egil Håskjold Larsen (Gunda) for Best Cinematography. The Best Documentary title went to Acasa My Home, which was also the winner of the overall Festival Documentary Competition. 

The DFCC this year announced writer-director Ivan Kavanagh (Son) as recipient of the George Byrne Maverick Award, and actress Zofia Stafiej (I Never Cry) as recipient of the Michael Dwyer Discovery Award. Jury Awards were also given to actor Kyle Gallner (Dinner in America), writer-director Noah Hutton (Lapsis), writer-director Zoé Wittock (Jumbo) and writer-director Bryan Fogel (The Dissident).

Young Film Critics

This year’s Festival partnered with a group of extremely enthusiastic film writers and film critics. Co-ordinated by Sorcha Hyland on behalf of Young Irish Filmmakers, the Young Film Critics initiative aims to create more informal education space for young people to engage with cinema. This year, the group of nearly 30 young people watched a selection of films from the programme and wrote up reviews as well as created podcasts on specific films. The group also participated in a writing workshop with Finn Halligan as well as meeting with filmmakers Aleem Khan (After Love)  and Jerry Rothwell (The Reason I Jump). Their work will soon be hosted on the Festival website!

“This year’s event has surpassed my expectations in terms of numbers and reach and I’m delighted the programme has connected with new audiences across Ireland and around the world. It’s been a different way to both present and experience the festival, but as a team we have embraced the challenges and delivered a great programme with a wonderful line-up of guests. As we come to the end of an exhausting 12 days we will close on a high note with a really superb new Irish film Rachel Carey’s Deadly Cuts.”  Grainne Humphreys, Festival Director