TO MARK 30 years of the Galway Film Fleadh, the festival has announced What the Fleadh?!, a new, dedicated late night strand, featuring movies that are strange, scary, or fantastical.
Opening the programme on Tuesday July 10 is An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn, starring Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation ) as a dissatisfied wife who is stunned when a TV commercial reveals a mysterious man from her past. It also stars Matt Berry (The IT Crowd ). See it on Tuesday July 10 at 10pm in the Town Hall Theatre.
Creator and star of cult TV show Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Matthew Holness, presents his new horror film Possum (Wednesday 11, 10pm, Pálás ) where Sean Harris (’71, Prometheus ) plays Philip, a children's entertainer. Together with Possum, the hideous hand puppet he keeps in a black leather case, he returns to his childhood home compelled to confront his demons.
A demonic stalker also haunts the titular character in Luz (Saturday 14, 11pm, Pálás ), the debut feature director Tilman Singer. On a rainy night, cabdriver Luz, drags herself into a run-down police station, where she faces a showdown with a demonically possessed police psychiatrist, who knows Luz from her rebellious past at school.
In action/comedy Dead In A Week Or Your Money Back (Thursday 12, 11pm, Pálás ), Aneurin Barnard (Dunkirk ) plays William, who hires one-man euthanasia clinician Leslie (Tom Wilkinson ), and selects 'quick and painless' from Leslie’s brochure Your Death...Your Way.
What the Fleadh?! also features films from debut women directors, such as The Devil’s Doorway, directed by Aislinn Clarke, the first found-footage horror film to be made in Ireland and the first Irish horror feature directed by a woman. Lalor Roddy plays a priest sent by the Vatican to investigate a miraculous event in an Irish home for 'fallen women' in 1960. What he uncovers is something much more horrific (Wednesday 11, 10.30pm, Town Hall ).
The Ranger (Friday 13, 11pm, Pálás ) is a modern take on survivalist horror that celebrates and subverts the usual tropes, and is equal parts humour, glitter, and gore. Set to a killer punk soundtrack and presented in eye-popping neon colours, director Jenn Wexler's debut stars Chloe Levine and Jeremy Holme in a love letter to 1980s slasher flicks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBijdXcd5hk
In Swiss director Lisa Brühlmann’s fantastical horror, Blue My Mind (Friday 13, 10. 45pm, Pálás ), 15-year-old Mia discovers her body is changing radically, and despite desperate attempts to halt the process, she is soon forced to accept that nature is far more powerful than she.
Director Michael Tully (Ping Pong Summer ) returns to Galway with Don’t Leave Home (Friday 13, 10.15pm, Town Hall ), where an American artist's obsession with an urban legend leads her to investigate the story's origins in the crumbling estate of a reclusive painter. Indiewire called it "Get Out with Catholic guilt in the Irish countryside".
The much loved Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure plays at the Film Fleadh, with writer Ed Solomon in attendance (Saturday 14, 10.45pm, Pálás ). For more information and tickets see www.galwayfilmfleadh.com
