Dublin International Film Festival line-up features big names and fresh talent

Mescal is coming! The 21st edition of the Dublin International Film Festival welcomes Normal People alumnus and – courtesy of A Streetcar Named Desire – voguish West End darling Paul Mescal. The Oscar nominee will take a detour from his hectic awards season schedule for the Irish premiere of God’s Creatures.

The rural Irish melodrama – directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer – stars the remarkable Emily Watson as a mother whose maternal instincts are challenged by allegations against her son. Watson will be on hand to receive the Volta Award, the festival’s weighty lifetime achievement gong.

Other tentpole screenings include Robert Connolly’s much-admired Blueback starring Mia Wasikowska, Eric Bana and a brightly coloured fish; How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a heist film based on Ariela Barer’s engaging 2021 chronicle of social justice and civil disobedience; and 406 Days, director Joe Lee’s account of the Debenhams picket line and the demonstrators’ struggle against unfair dismissal and big business.

Stay tuned for the last day of the programme and Neil Brand’s live-scored projection of Steamboat Bill Jr; the thrilling 1928 classic is so daring in its stuntwork that Hollywood lore once held that writer, director, star and acrobatic stuntperson Buster Keaton was suicidal during production.

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Last year’s programme saw An Cailín Ciúin receive its first major award when the Dublin Film Critics’ Circle named the current Oscar contender as best Irish film. No pressure on this year’s homegrown crop, including Cara Holmes’s compelling portrait of artist and shepherdess Orla Barry in Notes from Sheepland, Andrew Legge’s intriguing found footage science fiction film Lola, and Claire Dix’s euthanasia drama Sunlight.

John Connors’ crime drama The Black Guelph traces an ambitious line between Dante’s Inferno, clerical abuse and contemporary drug addiction. Finnish filmmaker Klaus Härö's Achill-set, English-language debut My Sailor, My Love stars the great Bríd Brennan. Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor unravel the complicated relationship between Ireland and England in the personal cine-essay The Future Tense. Dennis Harvey’s I Must Away charts a migratory path between Ireland, Sweden and Chile.

Irish directors Sinead O’Shea and Margo Harkin take on Irish Catholic theocracy and the mother and baby Home scandal in Pray for our Sinners and Stolen, respectively.

Ann, Ciaran Creagh’s considered drama based on the tragic death of 15-year-old Ann Lovett in 1981, features a remarkable central turn by Zara Devlin, and 17 carefully calibrated sequences by What Richard Did cinematographer David Grennan.

Fresh from Venice, octogenarian Walter Hill’s starry western Dead for a Dollar features an epic stand-off between Christoph Waltz and Willem Dafoe. Lukas Dhont’s Close, a Cannes runner-up, is an unbearably moving drama about pre-teen friendship. Also from Cannes, Belgian filmmakers Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch (Broken Circle Breakdown) adapt Paolo Cognetti’s Alpine-based novel, The Eight Mountains.

There’s more mountainous terrain in Carmen Jaquier’s Foudre in which a turn-of-the-century novice returns to a remote Swiss village to investigate the mysterious death of her sister.

Season ticket holders can embark on a cinematic journey around the world with Day After, Kamar Ahmad Simon’s vibrant snapshot of Bangladeshi shipping; Cristian Mungui’s thrilling Transylvanian tale of xenophobia, globalism and bears, RMN; Kanaval offers a festive history of Haiti; and from Japan, the euthanasia-themed sci-fi, Plan 75.

Elsewhere, a young Moroccan theatre troupe attempt to stage A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Shakespeare in Casablanca. Galician locals are not impressed when eco-minded sophisticates Denis Ménochet and Marina Foïs set up an eco-friendly farm in The Beasts. Seven stories intersect in Gen-Z South Korean horror New Normal.

Nicholas Cage dons a cowboy hat for the western Butcher’s Crossing. A privileged housewife (Aline Kuppenheim) is asked to secretly care for a wounded revolutionary during the year of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in the nervy drama, 1976. A Canadian couple attempt to rekindle their marital spark in The End of Sex.

Serbian documentarian Mila Turajlic’s Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudovic Reels recounts the story of Stevan Labudović, a frontline correspondent in Algeria and Yugoslavian leader Tito’s favourite cameraman.

Fans of lovely oddities should check out The Ordinaries, Sophie Linnenbaum’s surreal fantasy which divides society according to casting rules. Matt Johnson follows up The Dirties with BlackBerry, a drama charting the rise and fall of the formerly indispensable electronic device.

Guests – both virtual and in-person – include Neil Gaiman, cinematographer Robbie Ryan (on hand to unveil the impressive Medusa Deluxe), filmmaker Artavazd Peleshyan, and Jane Seymour. The latter with chat with Rick O’Shea at a special event in Dublin Castle. Lenny Abrahamson will pop up to chat about Cool Hand Luke; the Paul Newman classic will be dusted off for a special screening.

Night owls are sure to have a blast at three special (almost) midnight movies. Pearl, Ty West’s even spoofier melodramatic spin-off from the spoof horror X, is a guaranteed crowd pleaser, as is a welcome reissue of Iván Zulueta’s underground classic, Arrebato (1979). Sisu is a lively Finnish shoot-em-up in which an ex-Lapland soldier battles withdrawing Nazis for gold.

Dublin International Film Festival runs from February 23rd until March 4th