Irish Film Festival 2022

Overview

Across four days in August, Sydney's Chauvel Cinema will dedicate its screens to ten films from one country: Ireland. The reason? The return of the Irish Film Festival as an in-person event, after not one but two years of hosting sessions online — and, for its big cinematic return between Thursday, August 25–Sunday, August 28, it has quite the drawcard on its lineup.

Box office Gaelic-language smash The Quiet Girl leads this year's program, after initially taking to the city's big screens at the Sydney Film Festival — so if you missed it then, this is your next chance to see it. The tender 80s-set drama, about a soft-spoken nine-year-old (newcomer Catherine Clinch) who is sent to stay with relatives for the summer, has been breaking box office records for Irish-language movies in Ireland and in the UK. It was also just picked as the country's submission in the Best International Feature category at next year's Oscars, and hits IFF before its general Australian release.

The rest of the festival's selection isn't short on highlights either, including opening-night documentary Steps Of Freedom, about Irish dance and its worldwide popularity — plus Let the Wrong One In, a vampire comedy that fittingly boasts Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Anthony Head among the cast.

Or, there's Love Yourself Today, which focuses on Damien Dempsey's music; You Are Not My Mother, about a mother's disappearance from a North Dublin housing estate; and Redemption Of A Rogue, a black comedy about salvation.

And, 1992 classic Into the West is also on the bill, with the magical-realist fantasy about a mysterious white stallion featuring a cast that includes Gabriel Byrne (Hereditary) and Brendan Gleeson (The Tragedy of Macbeth).

IFF will also keep an online component to this year's fest, screening digitally from Friday, September 30–Sunday, October 16.