Online Selection
We are delighted to offer this programme of Irish premieres online nationwide from Monday 11 to Sunday 17 November and to screen three of these films in cinema with closed captioning in cinema (The Deposition, Hands in the Fire, and In Limbo).
Online films: Just like cinema screenings, online screenings have limited capacity so we recommend pre-booking.
2024 Programme
THE DEPOSITION (LA DÉPOSITION)
Documentary
1993. Emmanuel was a young village boy in Eastern France. He believed he had found a friend in Hubert, the new local priest, a popular man. One rainy afternoon, Emmanuel left the presbytery after promising Hubert not to tell anyone what had just happened. In fact, Emmanuel did tell his parents that he was molested by Hubert. But at the time, his parents chose to keep the boy’s allegations a secret. Thirty years later, Emmanuel remembers and confronts his father, Robert. Several months later, encouraged by a government-commissioned report on sexual violence within the Catholic Church, Emmanuel goes to the police station, discretely switches his phone recorder on and starts his deposition.
Director Claudia Marschal finds the perfect balance to register this tragedy’s devastating impact at an intimate, family and collective level. The extraordinary effort required to get to the point of this “deposition” helps us measure both the scope of the scourge and the shattering solitude of its innumerable victims. Emmanuel’s (and Claudia’s) gesture is essential.
MON 11 | ARC CINEMA | 20:00 & ONLINE
IVO
Fiction
Ivo is a palliative care nurse who visits patients at their homes – wealthy people, poor people, Ivo sees them all, doing her rounds in the car where she spends most of her day. Ivo has formed a very close friendship with one of her patients, Solveigh, who is of a similar age, and also Solveigh’s husband, with whom she sleeps with in hotels when they are not both taking care of Solveigh. But when Solveigh asks for Ivo’s help to end her life, cracks begin to appear in Ivo’s routine.
The second film from director Eva Trobisch, Ivo is a deeply moving drama, immersed in realism and giving no place for anything to hide, unafraid to face life-changing, and life-ending, decisions.
HANDS IN THE FIRE (MÃNOS NO FOGO)
Fiction
Young film student Maria do Mar travels the Douro River region to document old manor houses for her thesis project. Naively confident in the power of cinema to capture reality, she is shaken upon discovering the dark secrets of the final manor on her list.
Veteran Portuguese filmmaker and artist Margarida Gil playfully uses the narrative foundations of Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw, exploring some of its ignored passages. Her house of horrors being rather a place of ubiquitous pictural beauty, has her innocent young protagonist, who is obsessed about “The Real in Cinema”, lost her way or, on the contrary, found the grail of her quest?
SUN 10 | ARC CINEMA | 20:30 & ONLINE
IN LIMBO (W ZAWIESZENIU)
Documentary
Ukraine, February 2022. Russia has just invaded Ukraine. Disabled after a leg surgery, Alina is alone with her cat, in a small city near Kyiv. The bridges are destroyed. Alina manages to find the only road still operational and escapes with her cat to join her parents, caught by the war in their cottage in the nearby village. Amid the noise of the bombs, the three do their best to get on with life: keeping warm, feeding themselves and rescuing abandoned animals. She films their daily lives, in which the tension of their enclosed world and uncertain future seems to grip them all.
The limited scale of Maksimenko’s film has the reserve effect of greatly increase our understanding, both intellectual and visceral, of war’s impact on individuals. Because she films her family, with what it implies in terms of honesty and emotion. A raw and haunting testimony.
MON 11 | ARC CINEMA | 16:00 & ONLINE
MY SUNSHINE (BOKU NO OHISAMA)
Fiction
On a Japanese island, life revolves around the changing seasons. Winter is time for ice hockey at school, but Takuya isn’t too thrilled about it. His real interest lies in Sakura, a figure skating rising star from Tokyo, for whom he starts to develop a genuine fascination. Coach and former champion Arakawa, spots potential in Takuya, and decides to mentor him to form a duo with Sakura for an upcoming competition. As winter persists, feelings grow, and the two children form an harmonious bond. But even the first snow eventually melts away.
This deceivingly simple story keeps spreading its wings. A seed of suspicion is sown, and nothing seems the same, whether in the characters’ minds, or the viewer’s. Hiroshi Okuyama’s film is beautiful, that is self-evident, but it’s also subtly complex and moving.
THE TYPEWRITER AND OTHER HEADACHES (LA MACHINE À ÉCRIRE ET AUTRES SOURCES DE TRACAS)
Documentary
The caregivers of a psychiatric institute in Paris visit mental health patients in their homes and help them fix the little problems that can make daily life feel insurmountable.
The Typewriter and Other Headaches is the third opus in Nicolas Philibert’s triptych on the Paris Central Psychiatric Group which was the object of 2023 Golden bear winner On the Adamant. The second film, At Averroes & Rosa Parks is premiering in this year’s Illuminate strand.
This third, shorter feature takes us into the homes of some of the Adamant and Averroes & Rosa Parks’ protagonists, during the visits led by their caregivers.
Together, the three films are a most illuminating picture of the complementary approaches that can make up a satisfying support of mental health, if well thought-out and budgeted. An ideal picture that budgetary pressures sadly threatens to render more and more niche.
