Martin McDonagh is the poet laureate of profanity and invective, as fans of In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri can swear to. He will take a simple difference of opinion and transform it into deadpan comic aria of pigheadedness and mounting consternation. And in Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson he has a perfect double act: the dim hunk—Pádraic—and the old curmudgeon, Colm, best buddies almost by default. But then one day, out of the blue, Colm announces he’s had it up to here with his best friend, and cuts him off once and for all. One more word, he dares him, he’ll take a pair of garden shears and start chopping off the fingers on his own hand. The way he says it, you know he’d do it, and before long the whole village is consumed in the breakup.
Set on one of the Aran Islands on the west coast of Ireland in the 1920s, The Banshees of Inisherin may be a quieter, more contemplative film than McDonagh’s shown us before (County Galway has never looked more ravishing), but it’s uproariously funny all the same, guaranteed to bring the house down.
Best Actor (Colin Farrell) & Best Screenplay, Venice 2022
Martin McDonagh
Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan
Ireland/UK/USA
2022
English
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Little Amelie or the Character of Rain
Baby Amelie believes herself to be a god. Her parents (Belgian diplomats in 60s Japan) can barely cope -- but find the perfect nanny to restore order in this delightful animated feature.
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Wisdom of Happiness
An audience with the Dalia Lama, who, at 90, looks back on his life and shares the tenets of Buddhism as a practical guide to surviving the 21st Century with joy and compassion.
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
Dawn Pemberton Sings Aretha + Amazing Grace Film Screening
These dates are going to knock your socks off: one of the all-time great concert films, Aretha Franklin performing at the New Bethel Baptist Church in 1972, and Canada's own Queen of Soul, Dawn Pemberton, performing live in Aretha's honour.
Credits
Executive Producer
Diarmuid McKeown, Ben Knight, Daniel Battsek, Ollie Madden
Producer
Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Martin McDonagh
Screenwriter
Martin McDonagh
Cinematography
Ben Davis
Editor
Mikkel E.G. Nielsen
Production Design
Mark Tildesley
Original Music
Carter Burwell