THE Belfast Film Festival (BFF) has announced the opening and closing films for this year's programme, which will take place in November.
The festival will open on November 2 with a screening of Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, a surreal romantic drama starring Irish favourites Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. This will be the third Andrew Haigh feature to be screened at BFF following the Oscar-nominated 45 Years in 2015 and his debut, Weekend, in 2011.
On November 11, BFF's closing film will be Poor Things from acclaimed director Yorgos Lanthimos. Produced by Irish company Element Pictures and starring Emma Stone, Willem Defoe and Mark Ruffalo, the film won the Golden Lion at this year's Venice Film Festival.
To mark the end of the recent Writer’s Guild of America strikes, BFF will screen a selection of films about screenwriters and host a talk by US screenwriter John Sayles (Eight Men Out) and his partner and producer, Maggie Renzi. As well as screening a selection of their work, the film-making pair will be jointly presented with the BFF Réalta award for Outstanding Contribution to Film.
Belfast Film Festival will also partner with the new Avenue Cinema for its Screenwriters on Screen Retrospective with screenings of Barton Fink, Sunset Boulevard and Adaptation.
On Halloween night, there will be a special one-off screening of the FrightFest 2023 hit Haunted Ulster Live by Belfast filmmakers Dominic O’Neill and Will McConnell.
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The full BFF programme will be announced on October 12, with tickets for the following pre-sale events going on sale via belfastfilmfestival.org from today:
- All of Us Strangers
- Poor Things
- Barton Fink
- Sunset Boulevard
- Adaptation
- John Sayles and Maggie Renzi in conversation
- Haunted Ulster Live
“We are thrilled to present a fantastic line-up of new international film, an impressive selection which includes titles from every continent across the world," says Michele Devlin, director of the Belfast Film Festival.
"In this year’s programme we are focussing on the current industrial action in the entertainment sector, particularly the WGA and SAG strikes. We are so pleased to welcome Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director John Sayles and producer Maggie Renzi who will be jointly presented with the festival’s prestigious Réalta award for Outstanding Contribution to Film.”
See belfastfilmfestival.org for more information.
