What you lookin' at?

Al Pacino, Glenn Close and Martin Sheen will be rocking into Dublin for this year's film festival, which looks set to be a real cracker, writes DONALD CLARKE

CAN IT REALLY be 10 years since the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival kicked into action? Well, we wouldn’t be asking the question if the answer was “no”. There was quite a deal of kerfuffle in this place at the time. Appalled that the Dublin Film Festival had withered away, Michael Dwyer, this newspaper’s late film correspondent, elected to devise a replacement for the event he helped found in 1985. The festival was knocked together in a few short months and quickly became a raging success. Despite fierce competition, it continues to thrive under the stewardship of Gráinne Humphreys. This year, Humphreys has slung together a particularly impressive line-up of celebrities. Al Pacino, Glenn Close, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg are all expected to attend. You can engage with professionals at workshops. You can savour screenings of ancient classics. Enjoy.

CLOUDBURST

Thom Fitzgerald’s eccentric road movie receives a gala screening on the opening night. Olympia Dukakis and Brenda

Fricker play a lesbian couple who flee their nursing home and travel to Canada with plans to get married. Along the way, they make friends with a young hitchhiker. The picture won the audience prize for best Canadian film at the recent Edmonton

Film Festival. February 16, Savoy, 7.30pm

AL PACINO AND WILDE SALOMÉ

Few movie stars still shake the earth as much as the venerable New Yorker. The great man will be in town to introduce his eccentric study of Oscar Wilde’s notorious play Salomé. The pithily titled Wilde Salomé – an unofficial follow-up to his Looking for Richard – looks into the piece’s origins and includes readings of the dialogue featuring Pacino as Herod and the dizzyingly ubiquitous Jessica Chastain as the title character. Pacino will also participate in a public question-and-answer session.

February 20, Savoy, 7.30pm

GLENN CLOSE AND ALBERT NOBBS

Glenn Close visits the city for a screening of her film – co-written by John Banville – about a woman who is compelled to dress as a man in 19th century Ireland. Close has been nominated for an Oscar for her performance as the title character. The picture also stars such luminaries as Mia Wasikowska, and also Oscar-nominated Janet McTeer and (it wouldn’t be a proper Irish film without him) the indestructible Brendan Gleeson. Surprisingly, Jessica Chastain does not appear anywhere in the cast list.

February 18, Savoy, 7.30pm

GERMAN CINEMA

Each year, the festival pays special attention to the cinematic tradition of one particular country, and for 2012 all eyes are on Germany. The centrepiece of the mini-season is a trilogy of crime films embarking under the title Dreileben. Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf and Christoph Hochhäusler direct a linked series that seeks to emulate the festival success of such beasts as the Lucas Belvaux trilogy and the Red Riding sequence. Also check out The Day I was Not Bornand Sleeping Sickness.

HÄXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES

One of the jewels of silent cinema is unearthed for a special screening. Benjamin Christensen’s Swedish picture does pretty much everything it promises. Over four episodes, Christensen sets out to explain the spiritual and psychological origins of witchcraft. Part documentary, part horror film, Häxan achieved a famous afterlife when, in the 1960s, it was reissued with a commentary by no less a maniac than William H Burroughs.

February 18, Light House, 8.15pm

FOOTNOTE

One of the Oscar nominees for best foreign- language picture, Joseph Cedar's delightfully crazy picture follows an Israeli academic as he seeks to cope with a hugely damaging misunderstanding. Winner of the best screenplay at Cannes, the picture combines erudition with a unique class of knockabout humour. There are shades of the Coen brothers' A Serious Man.

February 19, Cineworld, 4.15pm

MARTIN SHEEN AND STELLA DAYS

Having turned up last year to promote The Way, Sheen, proud Irish citizen, returns for a screening of Thaddeus O'Sullivan's movie concerning a priest who tries to maintain a cinema in rural Ireland during the 1950s. Long a stalwart of Irish cinema, O'Sullivan is best known for such pictures as December Brideand The Heart of Me. He also recently directed the acclaimed TV production Into the Storm.

February 23, Cineworld, 6.30pm

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS

The director of such off-beam talky pieces as Barcelona and Metropolitan, Whit Stillman has always divided audiences. It's been 13 years since The Last Days of Discohonoured cinemas with its sly erudition. So much excitement gathers around this film concerning students at an east coast university. Greta Gerwig, Adam Brody and Analeigh Tipton star. The director should be in the cinema to chat to his many fans.

February 17, Cineworld, 9pm

OUT OF THE PAST

The festival is presenting the opportunity to see a wide range of classics, crowd-pleasers and oddities. Parents and children can blub along to Disney's perennially unsettling Bambi. Swingers can get all groovy while savouring the glamour of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up. Al Pacino is recognised with outings for Looking for Richardand Panic in Needle Park. Is there any film more quirky and imaginative than Jean Cocteau's Orpheé? Well, coming from a very different direction, Michael Powell's immortal The Life and Death of Colonel Blimpruns very close indeed.

STARGAZING IN DUBLIN

If you want to get a head start on your movie overdose, this exhibition – featuring photographs of great film stars in the capital – is already open on the top floor of the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre. Sheamus Smith, former head of Ardmore Studios and Irish Film Classifier, has gathered images of such icons as Ben Affleck, Michael Caine and Kevin Spacey. Having been a press photographer in Dublin during the 1950s, Smith brings specialist knowledge to the enterprise.

Runs until February 26 at the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre

MICHAEL

Few recent films have dealt with such troubling material in such a detached manner. Markus Schleinzer, Michael Haneke’s casting director, emulates his mentor with a film about an Austrian man who imprisons a young boy in his stark basement. The picture combines the blackest humour with everyday horror in a manner that has divided festival audiences.

February 21, Light House, 6.15pm

SCREENWRITING WITH KENNETH LONERGAN

Many American critics viewed Kenneth Lonergan's Margaretas one of the most underappreciated films of 2011. That film will be screened at the festival and Lonergan, who also wrote and directed the acclaimed You Can Count on Me, will be talking aspiring writers through his techniques at a special event at the newly reopened

Light House cinema. February 22nd, Light House, 11am

SCREEN TEST

The festival pushes out the boat and presents an entire day of workshops, interviews and seminars with film boffins aimed at "students and members of the public who are interested in taking film courses or alternate paths into the cinema industry". Among those participating are Tony Cranstoun, editor of Death of a Superhero, Kirsten Sheridan, director of Dollhouse, and Gavin Burke, chief film pundit for Phantom FM.

February 24, Light House, 10am

THE DUBLIN FILM CRITICS’ CIRCLE AWARDS

Tara Brady, president of the Dublin Film Critics’ Circle, and your current correspondent will be among the loudmouths handing out gongs to those film-makers adjudged to have excelled themselves. Previous events have combined mild glamour with notably relaxed, well-oiled conviviality. As has been the case since 2010, the DFCC will present a breakthrough award named for Michael Dwyer. All are welcome.

February 25, IFI mezzanine, 5.30pm

SURPRISE FILMS

That’s right. This year there are two surprises. The tradition has been running since the days of the original Dublin film festival and has driven two generations of punters crazy with orgies of misguided guessing. If you can’t get tickets for the closing night surprise then hunt down the new event on the first Sunday.

February 19, Cineworld, 6.40pm/ February 26, Savoy, 5pm

DEATH OF A SUPERHERO

Ian Fitzgibbon, director of A Film With Me In Itand Paths to Freedom, offers us the moving tale of a terminally ill boy named Donald Clarke. Mixing live action and animation, the picture, adapted from a novel by Anthony McCarten, follows Donald Clarke as he attempts to emulate the heroes of his favourite comics. The cast includes Andy Serkis, Sharon Horgan and Michael McElhatton. Thomas Sangster stars as Donald Clarke in the festival's closing film. Yes, I know.

February 26, Savoy, 7.30pm

* For more information see jdiff.com