The 6th Guth Gafa International Documentary Film Festival will take place in Donegal from the 10th to the 14th of June. Highlights of the upcoming event, this year extended to a five day event, will include the Irish premieres of six award-winning films such as ‘Position Among the Stars’ and ‘Our Newspaper’ and three Oscar nominated US films including ‘Sun Come Up’ and ‘Gaslands’.
Jerry Rothwell’s ‘Donor Unknown’, this year’s Tribeca Film Festival’s Best Feature Film will open the event on June 10th after which several award winning projects will screen such as the Sundance 2011 winning, ‘Position Among the Stars’ from Leonard Retel Helmrich; this years Hot Docs winner, ‘Our Newspaper’ from Eline Flips; One World Human Rights Festival winner, ‘108’ by Renate Costa and the Visions du Reel winner, ‘The Tiniest Place’ by Tatiana Huezo.
This year’s festival will see a special focus on North America with eight films screening films alongside a specially curated animation programme from The National Film Board of Canada, called ‘Little Films from A Big Country’’. The North American films, which include 3 Oscar-nominated films, fall into three distinct strands; ‘Terrorism on Trial’, which will look at the question of how we define a terrorist, and will include the Irish premiere of ‘Better This World’ and ‘Wiebo’s War’. The second North American strand, ‘Small Actions vs Big Power’, focuses on environmental justice, and will see screenings of the Oscar-nominated ‘Gaslands’ and ‘Windfall’, a film about a community torn apart when a big wind energy giant comes to town.
The final North American strand, ‘Action on Climate Justice’, examines the imminent climate-related disasters facing communities across the planet. Screenings in this section will include the Oscar-nominated ‘Sun Come Up’ as well as ‘Climate of Change’ and ‘There Once Was an Island’.
Guth Gafa organisers invite all the directors to Donegal to participate in post-screening Q&As for their respective projects and will also this year host panel and industry events as well as providing networking opportunities. ‘Shape of the Moon’ Sundance award winning director, Leonard Retel Helmrich will return to this year’s event to run one a 2-day Single Shot Cinematography workshops for directors and cinematographers. The workshop is in partnership with FÁS/STI.
This year, due to Sheffield Doc Fest’s relocation from October to similar dates in June as Guth Gafa formerly had, the Donegal team have moved their industry days to Monday 13th and Tuesday 14th in a bid to capitalise on the connection with Sheffield by inviting world doc experts to come to Guth Gafa directly from Sheffield. As a result, Monday 13th June, Guth Gafa will host industry events with representatives from Sundance, Tribeca, POV, Chicken & Egg, Hot Docs Forum and more.
As a further incentive to industry participants, there is a Delegates only Networking Dinner on Monday, June 13th, where Irish filmmakers will get the opportunity to network with their North American and European colleagues in an informal environment.
Guth Gafa International Documentary Film Festival is supported by the Irish Film Board, IFTN, RTÉ, The Arts Council, TG4, Údarás na Gaeltachta, FÁS/STI, The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Donegal County Council and other industry partners. Festival organisers are currently offering €60 Industry Packages which include a 5-day Festival Pass, access to all Industry events on Monday and Tuesday. Full listings of the festival highlights, as well as more information about the event’s Industry packages is available here
