Over 80 Irish premieres will be taking place at Cork’s biggest film festival. CIFF 2022 begins this Thursday, with 200 films over 10 days. The latest films by Ireland’s own Frank Berry and Lorcan Finnegan are included in this year’s programme.
Frank Berry’s Aisha will be kicking off the Festival this week on the 10th of November at the Cork Opera House. The Michael Inside director’s latest film, starring Letitia Wright and Josh O’Connor, continues to examine incarcerated conditions in Ireland. Wright plays a young Nigerian woman seeking asylum in Ireland, floundering in the maze of social services and bureaucracy that is our inhumane system of Direct Provision.
More Irish talents will see their latest work screen for the first time at the Cork International Film Festival this year. Comedy-drama Ballywalter by director Presanna Pewanarajah of Netflix’s The Crown is set to screen, starring Patrick Kielty and Seána Kerslake, a bittersweet story set up North. Adrian Sibley’s The Ghost of Richard Harris presents unseen family footage and insights into the life of one of Ireland’s all time great actors, while Paul Muldoon: A Life in Lyrics celebrates both poetry and song of the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.
The eagerly anticipated new film from Lorcan Finnegan is another highlight. In Nocebo, a fashion designer (Eva Green) is suffering from a mysterious illness that puzzles her doctors and frustrates her husband (Mark Strong). Help arrives in the form of Diana, a Filipino carer (Chai Fonacier) who uses traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth. The film is a co-production between Ireland and the Philippines, supported by Screen Ireland and the Film Development Council of the Philippines. The psychological thriller arrives in wider Irish cinemas from December 9th, courtesy of Wildcard Distribution.
Big family films will engage the budding cinephiles of Cork, with Matilda the Musical and Disney animated feature Strange World also part of the programme. In this year of commemorations, The Everyman Theatre will be hosting a special screening of Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley also.
Exciting international cinema set to screen over the ten days of the festival includes Aftersun, the exceptional and emotional new film starring Paul Mescal, She Said – a dramatised account of the journalistic origins of the #MeToo movement, Armageddon Time by James Gray and Corsage, an acidic account of the life of Austrian Empress Elisabeth, with a great performance by Vicky Krieps. The packed programme will see the 67th edition of the Cork International Film Festival celebrate cinema from at home and abroad in a big way. The festival will finish up with a Clos
Tickets for the screenings and events at CIFF are available now – if you’re seeing anything at this year’s festival, give us a shout. We reluctantly admit to a lot of jealousy looking over the programme here at the capital.