The Covid convulsions have caused as much havoc for the film-festival circuit as they have for every other corner of the arts calendar. Last year Cork International Film Festival, the oldest such event in the country, found itself pummelled by the pre-Christmas lockdown that followed that premature autumnal opening-up. They were prepared and forged ahead with a largely digital programme.
The 2021 event looks to be returning to a class of normality. There will be screenings and live events across the city and county between Friday, November 5th, and Friday, November 12th. A digital season will follow from Saturday, November 13th, until Sunday, November 21st.
The festival, first staged in 1956, has always offered visitors a busy variety of treats. Its passion for short films, in particular, remains undiminished. But in recent years the international feature programme has undergone something of a renaissance.
This year's big show-off Irish premiere is Michael Showater's The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Jessica Chastain, currently second favourite for the best-actress Oscar, blows the roof off with her turn as the troubled US televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. Has Jess's time finally come?
The festival opens with Ali & Ava, the latest film from the always fascinating Clio Barnard. The director of The Selfish Giant and The Arbor tells a realist love story from contemporary Bradford. Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook star in a film that is already building huge amounts of buzz.
A fine array of arthouse features, many coming straight from Cannes, unspool for the first time on these shores. Where to begin? Julia Ducournau's Titane, winner of the Palme d'Or in July, stars Agathe Rousselle as a woman with a sexual attraction towards motor vehicles. It is the wildest film to take the top prize at Cannes in close to a generation.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria, the Thai director's first film in English, features Tilda Swinton in a typically oblique meander through the Colombian jungle.
Juho Kuosmanen's Compartment No 6, winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, is an off-kilter comedy about a train journey towards the Arctic Circle.
Andrea Arnold, the British director of such era-defining films as American Honey and Fish Tank, comes to Cork with her singular documentary on the life of a farmyard beast – called simply Cow. "This film is an endeavour to consider cows," Arnold says. "To move us closer to them. To see both their beauty and the challenge of their lives. Not in a romantic way but in a real way."
The festival has, since it positioned itself on the shoulder between autumn and Advent, offered Irish film-makers an atmospheric setting for the launch of their latest project. The team behind this year’s event, headed by Fiona Clark, the festival’s director, and Anna Kopecká, its director of programming, have again lined up a fascinating series of domestic films.
Much attention will be directed towards Alison Millar's Lyra, a documentary on the murdered journalist Lyra McKee. Millar, a friend of McKee, has crafted her film from hours of recordings on Dictaphones, computers and mobile phones.
The arrival of a new film by Pat Collins is always an event. The Dance, his latest, follows the choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan as he works on Mám, a multidisciplinary theatre piece that involves 12 dancers, the concertina player Cormac Begley and the pan-European orchestral collective Stargaze.
Alan Gilsenan, one of the nation's most versatile film-makers, will be by the Lee for the world premiere of The Seven Ages of Noël Browne, a study of that singular Irish politician.
Irish fiction features premiering include Colin Hickey's Where the Merrows Roam, a wordless study of childhood playing out to an eclectic score, and Robert Manson's Holy Island, a wistful drama set in a sleepy coastal town.
There is a lot more besides. Morgan Neville's already controversial Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain looks at that food writer.
Such markedly contrasting classics as Amy Heckerling's Clueless and Vera Chytilová's Daisies are disinterred for lucky audiences.
The live incarnation of the festival closes on November 12th with Justin Chon's Blue Bayou, starring Alicia Vikander and the director as a New Orleans couple struggling against the inequities of the US immigration system.
With further special events, interviews and celebrations, the 66th edition of the event could hardly be more imaginatively stuffed. It remains the best way of winding down the Irish cinematic year.
