It is poised to be a year without Oscars glory for Ireland, but Screen Ireland was looking beyond the March 2nd ceremony at the launch of its 2025 slate of more than 80 productions across film, television drama and animation on Thursday.
An unlucky hand for best international feature hopeful Kneecap, which was unable to pick up a nomination, does not eradicate the industry’s recent acclaim.
Speaking in advance of the disappointing showing, Screen Ireland chief executive Désirée Finnegan noted that since 2021, Irish film and talent have won more than 300 international awards and that several films were in contention for an Oscar nomination this year.
“It has been an incredible journey for the creative teams behind these projects, with so much achieved already.”
As it turned out, Nick Emerson, from Belfast, nominated for his editing work on papal election thriller Conclave, will be the key Irish representative making the journey to the Dolby Theater in just over five weeks’ time.
Otherwise, two acting nominations for early Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice – which counts Dublin-based Tailored Films’ Julianne Forde and Ruth Treacy among its producers – were the closest thing to recognition for the Irish industry.
Screen Ireland was among the supporters of the Canadian-Irish-Danish co-production, which charts a young Trump’s ascent to power through a Faustian deal with right-wing lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn.
The State development agency said total production spend generated by the Irish screen industry last year was valued at more than €430 million, up 33 per cent on 2023, a year when production timelines and investment decisions were affected by the US writers’ and actors’ strikes.
The figure was announced the day after it published research commissioned from Alma Economics showing the wider screen sector boosts the Irish economy by more than €1 billion annually and directly supports the equivalent of about 10,000 jobs, or almost 16,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs if ripple effects are taken into account.
That report also highlighted year-to-year fluctuations in activity, partly as a result of the pandemic and other global factors, but also because of the outsize impact that a small number of big film productions can have on the Irish figures in any given year.
[ Screen industry boosts Irish economy by €1bn amid ‘drastic’ global changeOpens in new window ]
Screen Ireland’s 2025 slate includes feature films Sunphlowers, The Restoration at Grayson Manor, One Night Only, Báite, Re-creation, Fran the Man, Power Ballad and Fifa World Cup saga Saipan.
Upcoming documentary features include Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story, Jackie & Coco, Testimony and Lesbian Lines.
The television dramas backed by the agency include The Walsh Sisters, Mix Tape, Irish Blood and a second series of Obituary, while Goat Girl, Holt, The Scavengers and Hey Fuzzy Yellow are among the animation projects on the slate.
Screen Ireland said on Thursday that it planned to ringfence funding of €5.5 million for the development and Irish language storytelling across all genres and formats. This year will also see the renewal of an initiative called The Voice, a concept development fund for projects led from an early stage by the creative vision of the director, while a €500,000 digital games development scheme will be introduced.
“In a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive marketplace, public funding for Irish film and television is now more essential than ever,” said Screen Ireland chairman Ray Harman.
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