20/03/2015 - Shooting for Socrates, The Tribe and Patrick’s Day are among the programme highlights

The 15^th Belfast Film Festival (16-25 April) will open with Mark Cousins’ I Am Belfast [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (UK) and close with Stephen Fingleton’s The Survivalist [+see also:
film review
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film profile] (UK). Other European programme highlights include James Erskine’s Shooting for Socrates (UK), Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s The Tribe [+see also:
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film profile] (Ukraine/Netherlands), Terry McMahon’s Patrick’s Day [+see also:
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film profile], Pablo Malo’s Lasa and Zabala (Spain) and Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence [+see also:
film review
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interview: Roy Andersson
film profile] (Sweden/Germany/Norway/France).

Boogaloo and Graham Oscar nominee Michael Lennox will hold a making-of talk about his debut feature, A Patch of Fog [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. And in recognition of the growing film production sector in Northern Ireland, this year the festival has introduced a new section presenting a series of locally made feature and medium-length films, most of which were produced on micro-budgets and developed by the filmmakers with their own money and in their own time. 

The festival is funded by Northern Ireland Screen, Department for Culture, Arts & Leisure (DCAL), the British Film Institute and Belfast City Council, and is supported by Europa Belfast.

Richard Williams, CEO, Northern Ireland Screen, said, “Northern Ireland Screen seeks to provide the people of Northern Ireland with the opportunity to see as wide a range of films as possible, including those made by the wealth of home-grown creative talent. Through our continued support from DCAL for Belfast Film Festival, we can help achieve this goal and make a significant contribution to film culture, education and training, and at the same time respond to the department’s imperative of promoting equality, targeting poverty and social exclusion.”