Young actor Sadie Malone lights up opening night of Dublin International Film Festival – The Irish Times

Light House Cinema was buzzing a little earlier than usual for the first night of the 2024 Dublin International Film Festival. Fair enough. Sade Malone, star of Marion Quinn’s Twig debut, will be at the Gaiety Theater later to play the title role in John B Keane’s Sive. He bounces up the red carpet at tea time, excited and humble. “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet,” she says. “I’ve been on Gaiety before and I’m on Gaiety tonight. So, I have this little window where I can do this. I think it’s going to be tomorrow when it really sinks in.

Quinn, a member of a film dynasty that includes actor Aidan, cinematographer Declan and the late director Paul, has reimagined Sophocles’ Antigone as a contemporary Dublin crime epic. Malone owns her boss as a young woman caught up in her brothers’ deadly feud.

She was born in Greater Manchester and then moved to Dublin as a child before crossing the Irish Sea. Malone had a good time at Leeds. A bit in Liverpool. “Every Christmas I come back to Leeds and people will say: “You sound Irish.” As an actor it’s useful. “When you’re a kid you just want to fit in. So my ear adjusts. Sure, it looks a little Yorkshire on the red carpet, but totally Dublin on film.

Malone already has an impressive CV, but he, as a young artist, must have been desperate to fight Siv. “I don’t see it as pressure; I see it as a challenge,” she says. And Dublin Antigone? That is no small matter. “I actually did at school,” she says. “So I knew him really well. He was very smart. I was blown away when I read the script.â€

Quinn, also on the carpet for the premiere, made no effort to cheer for her star. “It reminds me of Saoirse Ronan,” she says. “He’s a natural actor, and wears it lightly.”

How an Irish Times video led to a delightful Birdsong documentary

We should declare the interest. Kathleen Harris’ delightful Birdsong, a study by ornithologist Seán Ronay, began life in The Irish Times. “Chris Maddoloni, head of video, saw this tweet posted by Sean,” Harris tells me. “We knew nothing about him. He was saying he wanted to record the song of every bird species in Ireland.â€

Harris created a short video as part of a series profiling “people with interesting jobs”. Now comes an hour film. Premiering on Thursday, ahead of screenings beyond 2024 on RT, Birdsong introduces us to a solitary figure. “The day I met Sean, he told me about his autism diagnosis,” Harris explains. “He was curious if I’d noticed it. And he was open about it. So I think that was part of what drew me to him. It was about spending a day in the woods with him, listening to the birds, but it was about hearing about his autism. was also

Born in the US, Harris lived in Ireland for 18 years. She worked at the newspaper for eight of those years before moving into documentaries (joining this reporter on a few red carpets). Her film allows Ronayan to speak to us through his enthusiasm as he walks the fields at dusk and dawn. When we first connect to it, it only needs a few calls to complete the entire local catalog. What was the hardest part of the job? “The birds don’t show up!” Harris says with a laugh. “I have watched all David Attenborough’s programmes. I am a big fan of all of them. I’ve seen all the behind-the-scenes stuff of people talking about how difficult it was to film wildlife. How they spent weeks in this one place for one thing. I guess I didn’t take it in. You just learn by doing.â€

• Birdsong screens at The Light House on Thursday 29th February at 10:30pm.

Three DIFF films to catch: Oink, Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry and Humanitarian Vampire Seeks Suicidal Consent

Now, you know the answer to an impossible trivia question. Mascha Halberstadt’s charming family film is the first stop-motion feature made in the Netherlands. And it is a potential classic for the ages: humble in appearance, pure in spirit. The inevitable comparison will be with the UK’s Aardman Animation. Oink is similarly at home for whimsy, but the threat signals it is more urgent. Young Babs, from child to nervous parent, is wary when her hitherto unknown cowboy grandfather – speaking Dutch with a faint American accent – arrives at the family home, but he soon wins her over with the gift of a eponymous piglet (apparently he calls animals). “Nor!” in the Netherlands). Or does it? The old man’s interest in the upcoming sausage competition raises dark suspicions. Based on the book by Tosca Manten, Oink weaves believable family crises with cleverly rolling adventure. Sufficient risk to keep adults alert. Not enough to alarm the little ones.

• Screens at the Pavilion Theatre, Dan Laoghaire on Sunday 25th February at 2:00pm.

Here’s a great film from Georgia that begins with a sense of quiet desperation before offering its protagonist (and us) something of an escape. It’s full of local habits and local foods – I take the white squishy dish everywhere to be khachapuri – but tells a universal story that might have suited the late John McGahern. A near-menopausal Atero (aka Chavlishvili) runs a small shop in an unremarkable village on the way to nowhere in particular. She messes with friends. A rare adventure comes when he falls down a hill while picking blackberries. Then a delivery man starts an affair. Etero is divided: raising her life or continuing in a state of mid-tempo stagnation? The story moves towards a surprising, and deeply moving, revelation, but the real journey is going on in the protagonist’s head. None of that would be clear without Chavlishvili’s brilliant performance that allows complex emotions to seep through the thinnest of cracks. He deserves all the awards.

• Screens at The Light House on Monday, February 26th at 8:45pm

We are not short of comedy vampires. We certainly have no shortage of vampirism as a metaphor for the pains of growing up. But this Québécois comedy-horror brings an impressively sour tone to its examination of the life of a young bloodsucker and his attempts at an unlikely alliance. The inversion is familiar. The family of vampires are disappointed by the lack of interest in young Sasha’s quick throat (think Munsters’ very generic niece). Eventually, after some mollycoddling, they send her to live with hip cousin Dennis (Nomi O’Farrell), a nocturnal stalker who allows no retreat. Eventually, our humanitarian vampire (Sophie Caideaux) finds, well… a consenting person willing to take her own life. (Felix-Antoine Benard). For reasons that should be obvious, the arrangement isn’t quite perfect, but the couple van try to profit something from a sincere comedic performance steeped in real emotion. Dressed in the inescapable colors of funeral black, Ariane Lewis-Cies’ debut knows when to drench the shock in a gothic facade. Impressive variations on well-worked themes.

• Screens at the Light House on Wednesday 28th February at 8:30pm.