WITH more than 200 films from across the world, the ACC Bank 11th Dublin Film Festival will have "something for everyone", the programme director, Mr Martin Mahon, promised last night.
The festival opens on March 5th with the new American film, 12 Monkeys, directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt.
A former member of the Monty Python team, Gilliam will be the subject of this year's festival retrospective programme.
He will attend the opening night screening of his film at the Ambassador cinema and he will participate in a public interview at UCI Coolock.
The festival closes on March 14th with the world premiere of an Irish film, The Boy From Mercury, set in Dublin in 1960, directed by Martin Duffy and starring Rita Tushingham, Hugh O'Conor, Tom Courtenay and eight year old newcomer James Hickey.
The Irish features on the programme also include Thaddeus O'Sullivan's Nothing Personal, set during an uneasy ceasefire in Northern Ireland in 1975; the family film, Joe My Friend; the BBC production, Loving, filmed in Birr Castle; and the 10 most popular films in the recent Irish Times readers' poll to select the Irish films of the century.
International visitors to the festival will include the Scottish director, Gilles MacKinnon, and the American independent filmmaker, Todd Haynes. The new "Cinema From Three Continents" season will showcase films from the developing countries.
The festival will host two seminars - one of the changing role of the screenwriter; the other on how the media treats stories of scandal and abuse.
Advance booking for the festival opens this morning at 2 Temple Lane, Dublin.