Irish Film Institute director David O'Mahony introduces this year's IFI Documentary Festival...
The IFI Documentary Festival returns from Monday 20th to Sunday 26th September, once again offering the best of Irish and international documentary filmmaking, with a diverse and engaging programme boasting multiple Irish premiere screenings.
This year is a little different, however, as the festival will be taking place both in the IFI's home venue in Dublin’s Temple Bar, and online at IFI@Home, our recently launched VOD service, accessible throughout the Republic of Ireland. Geography is no longer a barrier to experiencing our curated selection of challenging, inspiring, and thought-provoking films, the majority of which will come with the bonus of director Q&As.
Music films bookend the festival; Love Yourself Today, which centres on the music of Irish singer-songwriter Damien Dempsey, but also turns the lens on his legion of fans, opens the festival with a special cinema-only screening, the only such event in the festival with all other films being also on IFI@Home.
The festival closes with the IFTA-winning Breaking Out: The Remarkable Story of Fergus O’Farrell, which tells the profoundly moving story of a seminal figure in the Irish music scene.
Staying with the musical theme, We Are The Thousand explores just how far one man can take a crazy idea, namely, to try and convince the Foo Fighters to play a gig in his small Italian town by convening a rock band of 1000 musicians, who learn to play their hit song, Learning to Fly, in unison.
Other international highlights in the programme include Writing with Fire, an inspirational yet sobering look at the work of India’s only news agency run by Dalit (untouchable) women; President, the extraordinary story of Zimbabwe’s 2018 election campaign, the first since the removal of Robert Mugabe, presented in a gripping, verité style; Captains of Za’atari, which follows the lives of two teenage boys living in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon who dream of becoming professional soccer players; and The Saviour for Sale, which reveals the hidden trails of money, power, and deception behind a disputed Leonardo da Vinci painting.
In The Story of Film: A New Generation, prolific director Mark Cousins follows up his landmark series from 2011 to take the temperature of cinema’s last decade and finds it in rude health.
Mr Bachmann and His Class, a personal favourite in this year’s line-up, observes the unorthodox methods of a delightfully eccentric teacher to a class of teenage girls and boys, from a range of immigrant backgrounds, in a small German town. Emotionally engaged, and ever patient, he empowers the children academically while encouraging independent thinking. Don’t let the film's epic run time deter you from experiencing this masterpiece of observational documentary cinema.
Other Irish titles screening as part of this year’s in-cinema and online programme include the winner of Best Irish Documentary at the 33rd Galway Film Fleadh, Pure Grit, a depiction of an indigenous horse racer in Northern Wyoming. The Irish Wedding celebrates a diverse community of brides and grooms across the country, looking at what it means to love, and what it means to be Irish. And finally, this year’s Shorts Programme offers selections of Irish works embracing new and alternative modes of filmmaking.
The IFI Documentary Festival runs from 20th-26th September - find out more here.
