The 36th edition of the Dinard British and Irish Film Festival will take place in Brittany from 1 to 5 October. We'll be writing about the films in competition soon, but you can get ready to sign up your classes to see some great British and Irish films at special schools showings. You need to register between 18 August and 8 September for showings between 22 and 26 September.
As well as the film showings, there are workshops for schools to discover curry, chronophotography, British music videos, or the "English touch" in the architecture of Dinard, or to draw a poster or write a review or a film scenario.
The films proposed for primary classes are two animations of Julia Donaldson books, Room on the Broom and Stick Man, and Ten Lives, where a cat that has used its seven lives is offered a chance to return to life again but as a different animal.
Several films proposed for collège are focused on father-child relationships. In Uberto Pasolini's Nowhere Special, James Norton plays a man with a terminal illness who sets off on a road trip to find a new family for his three-year-old son. Aftersun stars Irish star Paul Mescal (Normal People, Gladiator II) as a divorced father who takes his almost-teen daughter on holiday. Charlotte Wells' début feature from 2022 was a word-of-mouth success. And Bird is Andrea Arnold's film about Bailey, a teenage girl coming of age in a London squat with her brother and her father, played by another amazing young Irish actor, Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin, Saltburn).
Plus for collège and lycée, the classic The Lady Vanishes (1938), a "closed- room" mystery set on a train and one of the final films Alfred Hitchcock made in Britain before moving to Hollywood. Hitchcock is the festival's symbol and his name is given to the trophies awarded to the winning films.
There is a whole range of history covered in a series of films for lycée. From Jude Law and Alicia Vikander as Henry VIII and his sixth and last wife Catherine Parr in Firebrand to Lee Miller's experiences as a photographer in WWII and Cillian Murphy in the beautiful film about the Magdalen Laundries scandal in Ireland, Small Things Like These.
The lycée section is rounded off with Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes in the adaptation of Robert Harris's novel about choosing a Pope, and two Northern Irish films set in the present day recommended from 1ère, Kneecap and The Flats.
For more information, check out the schools' page on the festival site, where you can download information about the films and access the online application form.
> Winning Films at Dinard
> Free Celtic Film Festival
> In the Streets of Belfast
> Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
> Branagh’s Belfast
Tag(s) : "British culture" "coming-of-age" "Dinard" "festival" "film" "HItchcock" "Ireland" "Irish culture" "Northern Ireland" "U.K."