Irish movies wow judging panels at Cannes Film Festival - VIDEOS

We are happy to announce that Irish filmmaker Rebecca Daly's The Other Side of Sleep has been chosen for the Cannes Film Festival Director's Fortnight.

The Other Side of Sleep was created with The Irish Film Board and is the first film from an Irish woman to appear in the prestigious Director's Fortnight.

A sleepwalker since childhood, Arlene works in the local factory of the small Irish rural town she grew up in. When a young woman is found dead in the woods, Arlene immediately channels her own mother's disappearance, twenty years ago. Increasingly drawn to the girl's family - her accused boyfriend and grieving sister, Arlene barricades herself in at night, depriving herself of sleep. Deep in emotional turmoil, her sleeping and waking realities soon blur, as the community searches to find the killer.

The Guard, written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, is also among the Irish films being shown at Cannes. It has been praised by critics and is being showcased at film festivals in Tribeca and Los Angeles.

In The Guard, An unconventional Irish policeman with a confrontational personality is teamed up with an uptight FBI agent to investigate an international drug-smuggling ring. The hilarious Brendan Gleeson who plays Sergeant Gerry Boyle alongside Don Cheadle, the FBI agent Wendell Everett have had audiences at Cannes in stiches of laughter.

Fastnet Films (http://www.fastnetfilms.com/) latest release, Ian Power’s The Runway, won best film at the Galway Film Festival and was selected by the Directors Guild of America for it’s annual Director’s Finder Series 2010.

The Runway is a sweet and touching Irish film, and one that is bound to do well at Cannes Film Festival 2011. In The Runway, the citizens of Ireland's County Cork come to the aid of a South American pilot who has crash landed in their town.