Looking Forward to Next Year Already

Date Published: 18-Jul-2008

THIS year’s Galway Film Fleadh has been described as even bigger and better and already its organisers have started work on next year’s event.

Two years ago, a figure of €5.6million was put on what the annual Fleadh is worth to the city – this year it is believed that figure has surpassed €10 million.

Thousands of filmgoers attended the five day long festival, mainly at the Town Hall Theatre, though the Omniplex and the Cinemobile located outside the Town Hall were also used to show about 250 films. This was made up of 100 short films and at least 80 features as well as a number of documentaries.

One of the highlights of these documentaries for the punters was the one by Gabriel Byrne, which will be broadcast by RTE in the near future, according to Miriam Allen, Director and founder of the Film Fleadh.

A tired but happy Ms. Allen described this year’s Fleadh as “even better than last year’s and last year was great!” “We had record attendance and the standard of the films and documentaries shown was excellent this year. And we had more movies, which gave people more variety, of course.

“One of my own personal highlights was meeting the great Peter O’Toole and in turn, he wanted to meet his own rugby hero, Brian O’Driscoll, who attended the Fleadh with his actress girlfriend, Amy Huberman. We organised that meeting of course and Mr. O’Toole was…