Galway-based filmmaker Tristan Heanue has been nominated for the Discover Award at the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival for his short film Ciúnas (Silence). The winner of the prestigious award will be announced at the festival's closing ceremony on March 8.

Ciúnas is an Irish-language short film that follows a couple embarking on a journey in the midst of a family crisis. This nomination marks another accolade for the film, after it won the Grand Prix at the Cork Film Festival in November, placing it on the Academy Awards longlist for 2021. Heanue also received the Irish Screen America Rising Star Award last year.

"I'm hugely honoured to be nominated for this award among such an incredible list of Irish talent," Heanue said. "I am so happy with how people seem to have connected with the film since we screened at the Galway Film Fleadh last July. I received great support from everyone at the Físín Script competition in Dingle after I won the competition and we are all very proud of what we created."

What's next for Heanue? He can be seen on the screen playing the lead role in Paddy Slattery's debut feature film Broken Law, out this summer, and is preparing to shoot his next short film Harmless, which won the Kerry Short Film Bursay last year. Harmless will be a collaboration with fellow filmmaker Ronan Cassidy that deals with the interactions between an isolated older man living in rural Kerry and a group of joyriders in the area.