29 February 2020
By Mary Bermingham
mary@TheCork.ie
Aisling Walsh’s work has screened at festivals around the world winning several accolades, including a BAFTA TV Award for Room at the Top (2012), an Irish Film and Television Award and a Canadian Screen Award for her direction of Maudie (2016).
Not afraid to cover challenging subjects, Walsh made her first film in 1989, Joyriders, a tense drama about a grieving couple who move to the west of Ireland to start a new life. This led to a busy career in television, working as a director on The Bill, Doctor Finlay, Roughnecks and Lynda La Plante’s ground-breaking crime drama, Trial & Retribution. Aisling returned to the big screen to make Song for a Raggy Boy (2003), one of the first Irish films to directly address the thorny issue of clerical abuse.
Her subsequent work for TV includes Fingersmith (2005), Wallander (2012). Her Features also include Daisy Chain (2007), Maudie (2016) and most recently Elizabeth is Missing (2019) a television drama film, starring Glenda Jackson as Maud, an elderly woman living with dementia who struggles to piece together a double mystery.
The 12th Fastnet Film Festival will run for five days at the end of May 2020 in the seaside village of Schull in West Cork, Ireland. Fastnet will screen 12 Feature Films, run 12 workshops and 12 Seminars in 12 pop up cinemas in a village that has no cinema. Despite the fact that there is no cinema in Schull 7,000+ visitors will make their way to West Cork for the 5-day event. It will also include the Filmmaker’s Hub, Live Music, Parties, Drama, Movie Quiz, free family entertainment and Café Viewing all over town and on the local islands.
The line-up will be unprecedented with over 50 expert guests taking part, in excess of 400 screenings from 49 countries, Local Interest Films and a World Cinema Programme.