Neasa Ní Chianáin's new feature documentary, The Stranger, which had its World Premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh in July, has been selected for screening in the Semaine de la Critique (Critics Week) competition at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland next week.
The Stranger, produced by Soilsiu Films, is the first Irish documentary selected for Locarno's Semaine de La Critique. The Critics Week selection is a competition of seven world or international premiere documentaries, chosen by the National Association of Film Journalists in Switzerland for their expressive value or essence.
Neasa Ní Chianáin said of her film's selection, "We are thrilled and honoured to be selected for Locarno Film Festival. It's an amazing festival and to be chosen for Critics Week is a real honour, as they select films that push creative and aesthetic boundaries. The Stranger was a challenging film to make with a mix of archive, reconstruction and interviews, and The Irish Film Board and RTÉ should be applauded for supporting what is a quintessentially Irish film, but a film that is outside the mainstream."
The Stranger, which was funded by EU MEDIA programme, RTÉ and The Irish Film Board, is Neasa Ní Chianáin's first feature length project since Fairytale of Kathmandu, for which she won huge international critical acclaim, with screenings in over 30 international festivals, and a Best Director and a Best Film award.
Locarno is an 'A' list festival, and this year will be its 67th year, and special tributes will be paid to actresses, Juliette Binoche and Mia Farrow.
Ní Chianáin's film tells the intriguing story of Neal MacGregor, an English artist who ended up living for 8 years as a hermit in a stone hovel on the Gaelic-speaking Donegal island of Inis Bofinne in the 1980s. MacGregor was the last man to live on his own through the winters on the island, and the last man to die on the island. The film pieces together his life on the island through diaries he left behind, and searches for reasons why he left family, friends and London society life to live in almost complete isolation.
Soilsiú Films have recently received Creative Europe development funding for Neasa Ní Chianáin and David Rane's next feature documentary, In Loco Parentis, which is supported by RTÉ, The Irish FIlm Board and international partners. The project has been in development through the EURODOC creative documentary training programme, and David Rane, who has been attending the programme said: "I cannot stress enough how valuable the EURODOC programme has been to the development of our new project. In the two sessions so far, EURODOC has allowed me to take the project through an in-depth script analysis process, followed by a thorough review of the financing and marketing plans. In the next session, in Vilnius in October, I'll have the opportunity to pitch the project to more than 20 international commissioning editors, and hopefully allow me to close the financing on our project."
