Galway Film Fleadh launches their programme for 2021

Taking place July 20th-25th, this year's Galway Film Fleadh is embracing Ireland's outdoor summer.

While the majority of the festival will again take place online, this year's mainstage will be an outdoor cinema in Father Burke Park in the historic Claddagh in the heart of Galway city.

The programme for the 33rd Fleadh, launched this evening, features a spectacular eleven world premieres, forty-five new films, and over 100 short films, and will showcase powerful, moving, funny and provocative storytelling from both emerging and renowned filmmakers. Long established as a premiere festival for Irish filmmakers, this year's Fleadh is no different, with over twenty new titles from across the island flying the flag for Irish cinema.

At this years outdoor cinema, seventeen of the festival’s feature films and three of its specially curated short film programmes will be screened to 200 socially-distant audience members with audio delivered via wireless headphones.

The majority of this year’s festival is still taking place online, with all films, Q+A’s, filmmaker discussions and industry events still being streamed from the Film Fleadh website.

In a statement, Galway Film Fleadh said it was their wish that "those who cannot, or who aren’t yet ready for travel in the current phase of the pandemic, will enjoy the festival from the comfort of their own homes."

Northern Irish psychological thriller Here Before and Galway-made exposé on institutional abuse Untold Secrets will open and close the event, while each evening will see new world premieres such as Irish language drama Foscadh, based on the book ‘The Thing About December’ by Donal Ryan, Who We Love, starring Clara Harte, Dean Quinn, Amy-Joyce Hastings, Venetia Bowe, Amy Hughes, and independent feature Bicycle Thieves: Pumped Up from director Conor O’Toole and starring Roxanna Nic Liam, Alison Spittle, Maeve Higgins, Tara Flynn and a host of Irish comedy performers and writers.

Also featured will be documentaries like Pure Grit, about a young woman determined to become a champion in the male dominated world of Native American bareback horse racing and Love Yourself Today, which centres around the music of Irish singer songwriter Damien Dempsey and his fans, whose stories unravel their grief and find light in the darkness through communal art.

This years line up will also feature a host of international cinema with Irish creative talent in front of and behind the camera, such as Death of a Ladies Man starring Gabriel Byrne.

Also featured this year will be dedicated sections for international documentaries, LGBT+ cinema, music docs, genre cinema, mid-length programming, as well as the festival’s Oscar Qualifying short film competition and their Peripheral Visions film competition.

Highlights of the outdoor cinema programme include the debut of the Irish language version of the Oscar nominated and winner of IFTA Best Film award Wolfwalkers, which, if you thought had a mesmerising beauty and texture before, you will have to watch again as Gaeilge.

There will also be big screen presentations of animated classics including a 30 Year Anniversary screening of Disney's groundbreaking Beauty & the Beast and a screening to mark twenty years of Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-winning anime, Spirited Away.

This year’s Galway Film Fleadh runs from  Tuesday July 20th - Sunday July 25th.

Tickets for all 45 features and 100+ shorts are available to book from GalwayFilmFleadh.com.