Our international programme includes a selection of the best and freshest features by both well-known directors and exciting newcomers from around the world, all screened in Irish premiere. Check out some international award-winning highlights below. Book soon, they’re selling fast!
Explore our ‘Discovery Choice’ – a top film tip from our Programmers – read on to find out more.
All Festival tickets and passes are on sale now at corkfilmfest.org and the myCIFF app.
Aftersun
Anchored by stellar performances from Paul Mescal (Normal People) and outstanding young newcomer, Frankie Corio, Aftersun is an aching and arresting feature-directing debut by Scotland’s Charlotte Wells.
Twenty years after a childhood holiday, Sophie tries to reconcile the father she knew then, with the man she didn’t. Viewed through a prism of wistfulness and regret, the film is a delicate and empathetic dance between the memory of a loved one and a realisation of who they really are.
Winner, Cannes French Touch Prize of the Critics’ Week Jury 2022
Winner, Grand Special Prize and Critics Award, Deauville Film Festival 2022
Winner, Best Screenplay, Bucharest International Film Festival 2002
Winner, Special Award for the Promotion of Gender Equality, Sarajevo Film Festival 2022
Armageddon Time
Featuring star performances from Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, and Jeremy Strong, this period drama from acclaimed writer and director, James Gray, brings us to Queens, New York in the 1980s. Paul Graff is 12 years old and growing up in a warm family with a grandfather that encourages his artistic aspirations. After an accident, Paul is sent to a private prep school with almost exclusively white and prejudiced students.
Inspired by the director’s turbulent childhood, Armageddon Time is a deeply personal story on the strength of family, the complexity of friendship, and the American dream.
Nominee, Palme d’Or, Cannes Film Festival 2022
She Said
This biographical drama focuses on Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), The New York Times’ reporters that in 2017 published a report exposing sexual abuse allegations against powerful Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein. Their story launched one of the biggest sexual harassment and assault scandals in the history of Hollywood and helped propel the #MeToo movement.
She Said is based on the book written by the two journalists and had its world premiere at the 60th New York Film Festival.
Winner, David Carr Award for Truth in Non-Fiction Filmmaking, Montclair Film Festival 2022
Corsage
Witty and bold costume drama Corsage is a daring and subversive biopic, an homage to the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as ‘Sissi’.
Beautiful and intelligent, Elisabeth is fighting against the royal court rules and her self-imposed image of the female monarch in this drama by Austrian director Marie Kreutzer. Award-winning actress Vicky Krieps received the Un Certain Regard – Best Performance award at Cannes Film Festival for her impressive take on Empress Elisabeth.
Winner of Best Film Award at BFI London Film Festival 2022;
Prize for Best Performance – Un Certain Regard (tied) 2022 for Vicky Krieps
The Silent Twins
Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczyńska (The Lure, Fuga) brings her fascination with twin sibling relationships and peculiar mental states to The Silent Twins, the astounding true story of June and Jennifer Gibbons (spellbindingly played by Letitia Wright – also starring in CIFF Opening Gala Aisha – and Tamara Lawrance), Caribbean twin sisters who grew up in conservative small-town Wales in the 1970s.
Smoczyńska’s bold and inventive visual style is deployed to full effect in recreating the unusual shared imaginary world of the twins, who chose to defiantly retreat from the prejudicial realities around them until an act of violence changes everything.
Winner – Best Film – Gdynia Film Festival, Poland 2022
Official Selection, Cannes Film Festival 2022, Melbourne International Film Festival 2022, Busan International Film Festival 2022
Discovery Choice!
Piaffe (Wed, 16 / Sun, 20 Nov, Gate Cinema) comes recommended by Anna Kopecká, CIFF Director of Programming. Shy introvert Eva takes over her sister Zara’s job after she is hospitalised. Zara had been working as a foley artist to create the sounds for a commercial featuring a horse. As the struggling Eva immerses herself into the role, she discovers that a horse’s tail has begun growing from the base of her spine.
Small, Slow but Steady (Mon, 14 Nov, Gate Cinema / Wed, 16 Nov, Triskel) comes recommended by Si Edwards, CIFF Programme Manager. Keiko is a young professional boxer born with a hearing impairment. Although this adds to the challenges of her training, Keiko is happy with her very patient boxing club, and she is close with her coach. But the fallout from COVID-19, together with her coach’s failing health, causes Keiko to begin doubting her abilities, and herself.
