People of 2016: Oscar winner Ben Cleary. ‘Everything is changing’

The last time I met Ben Cleary, he looked as if he'd just stepped off the world's most frightening rollercoaster. We were in Hollywood, and Cleary was clutching his Oscar for best live-action short. Leonardo DiCaprio was somewhere nearby. Alicia Vikander had just been in to see us. An hour had passed since he got the award for Stutterer, but he still looked properly shattered.

“We absolutely were,” he says, laughing. “You can’t really drink while you’re actually at it. But after we won we got backstage and people were coming round with trays of champagne. We were hanging out with Chris Rock. We were watching the rest of the show with him. If we looked dazed, that’s because we were.”

Last year's Oscars were the greatest ever for Irish film. With all that recognition for Room and Brooklyn, the Irish Film Board managed more nominations than Paramount and Universal combined.

But Cleary was actually the only Irish person who won that night. Entirely self-financed, Stutterer charmed its way past 140 eligible films and kicked the Dubliner into another league.

"We were chatting to Michael Keaton about Spotlight. We were chatting with Mark Ruffalo," he says. "You've won an Oscar, so everyone is very nice. It sounds obvious to say 'it felt surreal'. But it really did. When I look back at it now, it feels like a very detailed dream that somehow actually happened."

As the next Oscar season grinds into gear, Cleary and I meet amid the relative calm of the Irish Film Institute. The film-maker is now part of the Oscar process. He was admitted to the Academy in June (alongside Lenny Abrahamson and Emma Donoghue, respectively director and writer of Room) and is now ploughing through DVD screeners of the films competing for the 2017 awards. I assume life changes for a film-maker when you have that gold man on the shelf.

“Hugely. When you first get shortlisted a ton of emails come through to you. It’s daunting,” he says. “The best thing about winning has been getting a really good agent in London and brilliant management in the US. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity of getting in to see them if this hadn’t happened. I was holding off on getting an agent even before we got on the shortlist. I wanted a bit more stuff. Thank God I did. Those people are looking out for you.”

Music business

The son of architect Shay Cleary, Ben studied business and law at University College Dublin before lunging into the music business. In 2010, he moved to London do a master's degree at the London Film School. He stayed in England after graduation and worked in an upmarket burger restaurant to finance Stutterer.

“I basically bankrupted myself,” he says.

Cleary is now spending most of his time at the family home in Rathmines.

“I have started to do some commercials to pay some bills,” he says. “I did two commercials for the Department of Justice and Equality on domestic abuse. That was great and for a really good cause. I am now writing my first feature.”

There is no production funding yet, so I would bet that he can’t tell us anything much about the plot.

"I can't really talk about it yet. Ha-ha!" he says. "It's quite a high-concept thing as well. So . . . I can tell you that I am doing a project for Amnesty International based on a poem called The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel. The poem talks about a world where the government constricts people to just 167 words per day. I got the idea to do a two- or three-minute piece on that concerning freedom of speech. That'll be happening in 2017."

Not many film-makers have sat where Cleary sits today. At the beginning of his career, before he’s had a chance to clear his throat, he finds himself an Oscar winner. Alfred Hitchcock worked for 60 years and never won a competitive Academy Award.

The possibilities are endless and daunting. He retains a passionate belief in projecting films on the big screen. ("I was here just last night to see Paterson," he says, gesturing around the IFI.) But he knows the medium is changing faster than at any stage since the introduction of sound.

“Everything is changing,” he agrees. “You have Netflix and these people altering how it’s done. But I’d love to make feature films. That’s what I want to do. It sounds like an obvious answer, but that’s the truth. That’s what I grew up loving. There has been some talk of TV work and I certainly wouldn’t say never to that. But my hope is that I can get my first feature. I hope it will then do well and I can move on to my second. That would be the ideal life.”