Psychiatrist Professor Ivor Browne will attend the opening night screening of ‘Patrick’s Day’ at the Irish Film Institute on Friday 6th February where he will take part in a post-film Q&A with director Terry McMahon and cast which will be hosted by TV3’s Elaine Crowley.
The critically acclaimed film stars Moe Dunford, Kerry Fox, Catherine Walker and Philip Jackson. Moe - who will be honoured at next month’s Berlin International Film Festival with a Shooting Star Award - plays a young man with mental health issues who becomes intimate with a flight attendant (Walker) with her own demons. When his obsessive mother (Fox) finds out she enlists a dysfunctional detective (Jackson) to separate them.
The former Chief Psychiatrist of the Eastern Health Board and Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at University College Dublin, Professor Ivor Browne said:‘By any stretch of the imagination Terry McMahon’s ‘Patrick's Day’ is a powerful, brilliantly written and directed film. Moe Dunford is wonderful, as is Kerry Fox, and the other actors are also excellent but this is more than a creative work of cinema.’
Professor Browne also believed that the film could have a lasting societal impact in Ireland: ‘It is not fiction. It is absolutely true to life. In my fifty years as a psychiatrist, and in the practice of psychotherapy, I have had to deal with family situations exactly like this. I feel it is vital that Patrick's Day should be shown to as wide a public as possible. This film is an extremely valuable piece of work that will have a major impact on people’s understanding of the nature of psychotic breakdown and indeed of psychiatric illness generally.’
The opening night screening of ‘Patrick’s Day’ will be held at the Irish Film Institute on February 6th and will be hosted by TV3 presenter Elaine Crowley.
Check out IFTN’s interview with lead actor Moe Dunford here.