A warm and witty comedy-drama exploring family, obligation, and caregiving. When one man unexpectedly becomes responsible for more mothers than just his own, his life fills with humour, frustration, and tenderness. Four Mothers is a compassionate, crowd-pleasing portrait of connection, patience, and the bonds that sustain us.

Listen to the Land Speak: A Journey of Return is an RTÉ documentary by the late Manchán Magan exploring the deep connection between Irish identity, landscape, and mythology. Travelling from bogs to mountains, Magan uncovers ancient wisdom for renewing our bond with nature, while confronting his own mortality through sacred sites and rituals.

When a young girl’s sketchbook slips into a mysterious pond, her drawings spring into chaotic, physical life — unleashing fantastical creatures across an unprepared town. As reality begins to unravel, she and her brother race to track down the unpredictable monsters before lasting damage is done. Meanwhile, their father struggles to navigate a community in crisis and reunite his family. Blending imagination, humour, and heart, Sketch is an inventive adventure about creativity, consequences, and connection.

Newcastle Community Cinema invites audiences to step back in time and explore cinema’s role in shaping culture and community. Cinema historian Dr Sam Manning presents The 1939 Diary of a Belfast Cinema-Goer — a remarkable record of 325 films seen in Belfast over a single year, on the eve of global conflict. This anonymous film lover logged titles, devised a personal rating system, and mapped cinema visits across the city. Among their favourites was Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938), the only British film to earn a five-star rating. Dr Manning brings the diary to life, followed by a screening as part of our Classics & Cake strand.

A powerful double bill exploring endurance, grief and the pull of open water. Dive, winner of Best Short Film at Waterford International Film Festival ( Directed by Amy-Joyce Hastings ), is a lyrical Irish short tracing one woman’s private reckoning with loss and memory on the Atlantic coast. This is followed by The North Channel Swim, an intimate documentary following swimmer Ryan Leung as he attempts one of the world’s most punishing endurance swims — a raw portrait of resilience, isolation and the human will to keep going.

A joyful and heartfelt tribute to Belfast’s punk roots, Good Vibrations charts Terri Hooley’s mission to unite youth through music in the late 1970s. Funny, moving, and packed with attitude, it’s a rousing local story about idealism, community, and the power of a great record played loud.

Set in a rural village during All-Ireland weekend in 1975, Báite blends murder mystery with intimate family drama when a body surfaces from a local lake and Peggy Casey’s life begins to unravel. Directed by Ruán Magan and adapted from Sheena Lambert’s novel The Lake, this atmospheric Irish-language feature was filmed in Conamara.

VENUE: Naíonra Teach Uidhilí

A moving and urgent film centred on a single emergency call that resonated worldwide, following the efforts to reach a young girl trapped amid conflict. Blending documentary testimony with dramatised storytelling, it offers a sobering reflection on humanity, responsibility, and remembrance.

This evocative essay film navigates the shadowy intersections of folklore, folk horror, and black propaganda during the Troubles. Beginning in the filmmaker’s childhood home of Carrickfergus, Simon Aeppli embarks on a personal journey through haunted landscapes and unsettling archival discoveries. Blending video essay with desktop documentary, the film uncovers a bizarre British Army psyops operation that staged fake occult rituals to smear the IRA as Satanists. Through landscape, audio interviews and personal reflection, it explores buried histories, social control, and the lingering spectres of Northern Ireland’s past.

Discover the magic of moving pictures in this fun Paper Cut-out Silhouette Animation Workshop for ages 6+! Using simple materials like scissors, paper, glue, light and a camera, children will work together to create their own short stop-motion film. Inspired by the pioneering techniques of Lotte Reiniger, this hands-on session introduces one of animation's oldest and most charming styles.

Adam Elliot returns with a heartfelt stop-motion feature about Grace Pudel, a woman navigating life’s quiet hardships through humour, memory and a love of snails. Wry, poignant and visually distinctive, Memoir of a Snail is a moving story of loneliness, resilience and unexpected kindness.

A bright, inventive LEGO-animated adventure celebrating creativity and self-expression. Bursting with colour, humour and imagination, Piece by Piece is a fun and uplifting big-screen treat for families and young audiences — perfect for weekend cinema trips and LEGO fans alike.

Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward star in this hugely entertaining cult creature feature set in a desert town under siege by giant subterranean monsters. Packed with laughs, practical effects and perfectly pitched suspense, Tremors is a monster movie that’s as funny as it is thrilling.

A tense, darkly compelling Irish-language drama that opens in the aftermath of a robbery gone disastrously wrong. When three unlikely thieves attempt to hold up a rural Irish Credit Union, what unfolds is far more than a botched heist — it is the beginning of a story told in reverse, peeling back the moments that led to catastrophe.

Including Q&A with director Damian McCann and producer Christopher Myers

A mesmerising, wordless animated journey following a lone cat navigating a flooded world alongside a small group of animal companions. Visually stunning and emotionally rich, Flow speaks volumes without dialogue — a rare, immersive big-screen experience for audiences of all ages.

SuperWorm is the clever, brave worm who uses his long body to help his friends and save the day.

Full of warmth, gentle humour, and charming animation, this short film is perfect for very young cinema-goers. After the screening, children can enjoy simple creative activities and a healthy snack in a relaxed, family-friendly setting.

Kicking off our festival in unforgettable style, A Quiet Love is a moving, groundbreaking documentary that follows three Deaf couples, each navigating love, family, and life’s extraordinary challenges. Told in a mixture of Irish and British Sign Language, with open captions, the film offers a rare, intimate glimpse into experiences often unseen.

Including Q&A with John & Agnes

This three Oscar megalith stars Adrien Brody (winner of Best Actor) in the role of a lifetime as a Holocaust survivor who immigrates to USA where he struggles to realise the American Dream until a patron gives him the chance to prove his designer skills.

Gene Hackman is Harry Caul, a San Francisco-based surveillance expert hired by a shadowy company director (Robert Duvall) to eavesdrop on a couple walking through Union Square. After much knob-twiddling and wire-tuning, he deciphers a clue that triggers his fear that he is being surveilled himself.

Sparkling with the surreal and humour, this is a story of buried secrets coming to life after Shula stumbles across the body of her Uncle Fred on an empty road in the middle of the night. Fascinating, fresh and funny, this complex movie elegantly mixes catharsis and levity to achieve a formidable work.

We travel back to a very different time when Gay Byrne quizzed female TV Show contestants about motherhood, marriage and housework as they competed for the accolade ‘Housewife of the Year.’ Funny, sweet and shocking, this winner of Galway Film Festival 2024 Best Irish Documentary, will have you counting your lucky stars.

NCC has teamed up with Wee Bookworms to bring a storybook-themed fun morning of creativity and imagination for 1-6 year olds. 

Join us on a walk through the old trees of Donard Park, meandering through the forest of the demesne that once surrounded the Donard Lodge and on to the quarry where the ravens live. Led by keen birder Andy Carden and other friends of our local flora and fauna, we will pause to listen to birds, spot rare trees and bathe in nature.

Who doesn’t love a wedding? Hankies at the ready for this warm celebration of the joys of the Irish wedding in all its predictability - the nerves, the dress, the speeches, beef or salmon, losing the rings, the first kiss. Following a number of couples, Director Alex Fegan’s faith in humanity shines in this display of all that is familiar and celebrates the huge diversity of Irish citizenry.

Fuelled by tracks from Sleaford Mods, Fontaines DC and Coldplay, we follow 12-year-old Bailey growing up in a freewheeling, graffiti-daubed North Kent squat with a teenage half-brother who dabbles in violent vigilantism and her feckless, magnificently tattooed, drug-dealing dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan).

This thrilling roller coaster film essay pulls together American jazz and the geopolitical machinations of the 1950s and 60s to deliver an insightful interpretation of the 1961 CIA-led assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first PM of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The film is propelled by the rhythms of jazz musicians of the day - Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie

Meet Seán Ronayne. He’s a man on a mission. He’s set himself the task to record the song of every bird species in Ireland - nearly 200 of them. At once inspiring and cautionary, Seán’s journey illustrates the beauty and importance of sound, and what listening can tell us about the state of our natural world.

This dazzling Dreamworks animation for all ages follows robot Rozzum Unit 7134 - Roz - as she is shipwrecked on a remote Pacific island. Her attempts to ‘execute task - return to manufacturer’ are thwarted by nature’s chaos and it is her own nature of AI programming that helps her to understand where she is and her new forest friends.

An artistic archive of stories and songs from Ireland’s rich musical tradition. Celebrated singer Cathy Jordan, of traditional powerhouse Dervish, brings these tales to life with music, sound, and visuals, preserving them for future generations. Using a ‘crankie box’—a unique storytelling device with scrolling illustrations—this project beautifully marries song and art.