Tommy Tiernan for Sky Road Festival

The premiere of a new documentary on comedian Tommy Tiernan is among the highlights of the inaugural Sky Road Film Festival which kicks off in Clifden this Friday and runs until Sunday.

Sky Road is the brainchild of Éamonn Ó Cualáin of the Cill Chiaráin basedSónta production company which makes programmes for TG4 and RTÉ across a range of genres, including sports, lifestyle, animation, documentary and factual.

Éamonn, who runs Sónta with his brother Seán, is anxious that the spotlight be kept firmly on the Sky Road festival rather than their company, but his pedigree is good. The award-winning documentary Lón sa Spéir – based on an iconic 1932 photo of a group of men having their lunch in mid-air while building a skyscraper in New York – is a Sónta production. On a weekly basis TG4’s Seó Spoirt is also made by the company. And the idea for this new festival was born from Éamonn’s experience as a producer.

“Two or three years ago we had a couple of documentaries coming out and it was very hard to get attention focused on them. They almost go under the radar if you don’t have a publicity machine,” he says of the experience.