The 2025 International Literature Festival Dublin is soon taking place, and in this year’s packed programme there’s a number of interesting screenings for film fans to explore. Since 1998, the festival has celebrated the best of Irish and international fiction, and non-fiction authors, poets, lyricists, playwrights and screenwriters through a myriad of exciting events.
This year’s International Literature Festival Dublin takes place from May 16–25 at Merrion Square Park), which includes a special screening of I Was Happy Here as they celebrate the life of Edna O’Brien, and a showing of cult sci-fi classic The Quiet Earth (1985). There’ll also be talks and special events diving into the links between film and literature, and more. Tickets for these screenings are €8.
Following on from Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story is a renewed interest in the adaptations of her work, and the festival will screen one of them this Friday, 8pm. I Was Happy Here (also known as Time Lost and Time Remembered) is the second movie in the Edna O’Brien ‘trilogy’ directed by Desmond Davis (The Girl with Green Eyes and The Country Girls). Cass had followed the bright lights to London, but quickly became disillusioned. After she met and married Doctor Langdon, she realised she wanted to go home, hoping to find love with the sweetheart she left behind. The action of the film takes place over one evening, interspersed with flashbacks from varying perspectives. Tickets are available here.
Saturday at 8, author Ece Temelkuran introduces The Secret of Santa Vittoria, about the Italian village which rallies together to hide a million bottles of wine from the Germans in 1943. A memorable celebration of solidarity. In the summer of 1943, the only substantial source of income for the hill town of Santa Vittoria is its wine. The townsfolk are horrified to learn that the occupying German army intends to confiscate the wine and transport it to Germany. The new mayor, Italo Bombolini, who is widely considered a buffoon by everyone in town – including his wife – surprises everyone when he rises to the occasion… Based on the best-selling 1966 novel by Robert Crichton, and starring Anthony Quinn, Anna Magnani, Virna Lisi, Hardy Krüger, and Sergio Franchi, it was shot almost entirely on location in Anticoli Corrado, Italy.
Then on Sunday at the same time, the festival offers up some cult science fiction, as Dorian Lynskey introduces mysterious New Zealand flick The Quiet Earth.
Zac Hobson awakens to find himself the sole survivor of a catastrophic malfunction in a secret energy project. All humans and animals have disappeared. No watch or clock shows anything later than 6:12. As time passes and the horrifying prospect of being the last man on earth becomes a reality, Zac finds himself falling deeper into madness and despair. Geoff Murphy’s film builds to a strikingly ambiguous climax that has left audiences talking for decades.
On Tuesday 20th, Angelo Tijssens introduces the film co-written with director Lukas Dhont, Close. The Belgian film tells the story of Léo and Rémi, two thirteen-year old boys who are best friends. The world around them is a bubble, they are happiest together, playing. But when this intense friendship suddenly gets disrupted by fellow pupils commenting on their closeness, they each react very differently.
Sunday 25th May will be taking a look at The View from the Good Seats. Maggie Armstrong, Francis Halsall and Cathy Sweeney will be in attendance for the occasion, in conversation with author, critic and educator, Declan Long, and again you can get tickets here. Tickets for this event are €12.
A childhood favourite on the big screen, a startling discovery, an awkward date…In the good seats: Essays on film asks: what is the continuing allure of film and cinema?
In the good seats: Essays on film is an arresting new collection of essays about the flickers of magic that film and cinema beam into our lives. Three contributors discuss those unforgettable moments when their lives were touched by film.
Maggie Armstrong’s writing has appeared in The Dublin Review, Banshee, and The Stinging Fly. In 2024 she was shortlisted Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards for her debut, Old Romantics.
Author of Contemporary Art, Systems and the Aesthetics of Dispersion, Francis Halsall is a lecturer in Visual Culture and co-director of the MA/MFA in Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD.
Cathy Sweeney published a collection of short stories, Modern Times in 2020, followed in 2024 by an acclaimed debut novel Breakdown.
PVA Books is the literary imprint of Paper Visual Art (PVA), which publishes journals, books, and online texts that focus on visual art, contemporary culture, and literature.