Tourism to Ireland will see a boost this year based on the reaction to two low budget Irish films, both directed and edited by Kerry based filmmaker, Alex Fegan.
‘The Irish Pub’ (2013) looks at 23 third generation Irish pubs and had a total budget of just €15,000.
The project was funded by The Irish Film Board and launched on Netflix on July 1st this year. Already it has been catapulted to the coveted ‘Popular on Netflix’ category, along with such high profile Academy Award winners as ‘Spotlight’.
It has since had Twitter and Facebook lighting up with people wanting to travel to Ireland. There was even a tour set up especially to cope with the demand called the The Irish Pub Film Tour.
Meanwhile, the documentary, ‘Older Than Ireland’ (2015), which was directed by Fegan and produced by Garry Walsh looks at 30 Irish centenarians aged 100 - 113, has now been playing theatrically in the US and Canada for a remarkable 6 months continuously.
It is currently at the highest grossing Irish documentary of all time in terms of international and domestic box office. The film, which had a micro production budget of just €85,000, also funded by The Irish Film Board, has played in every major city from the East coast to the West in both the US and Canada with it travelling to lots more cities in the coming weeks before moving on to Australia.
