A NEW short movie set in Ballymun and made following an innovative screenwriting course at Ballymun Regional Youth Resource Centre (BRYR) has been selected for The Galway Film Fleadh.
The Fleadh is an Oscar qualifying festival and one of Ireland’s leading International film events.
Starring Love/Hate’s Mary Murray (Janet Hartigan) and John Connors (Patrick Ward) Fingerprints was written by Ballymun local, 19-year-old Siobhan Duffy, who penned the winning short story while on the course.
Directed by Jimmy Smallhorne, whose debut film 2by4 won at Sundance, and produced by Jeff O’Toole, Fingerprints is a heart rendering story of troubled boy David and his relationship with his teacher, Miss Holden.
Speaking to Northside People in April, O’Toole explained why Siobhan Duffy’s Fingerprints script was chosen from the screenwriting course competition.
“Initially I gave everybody a challenge to come up with a synopsis of a story and a sample scene,” he said.
“They all came back and Siobhan’s just grabbed me because David, the character in the story, is coming from a troubled background and we work with young people here like that all the time.
“She knew the reality, and she had seen children in the area and in the flats like that all the time.
“She understood the troubles that they were going through and I just thought for a young girl, at 19, to be able to write something like that, I thought there was something special there.”
The script also attracted other high profile names in the film industry. The crew includes Director of Photography Fionn Comerford (Harry Potter, Breakfast On Pluto, Life’s A Breeze, The Vikings, Penny Dreadful), BAFTA winning editor Tony Cranstoun (The Royal Family, Mr Bean’s Holiday, Gold), IFTA winning sound editor Nikki Moss and renowned New York composer Joel Diamond.
The Galway Film Fleadh takes place on July 5-10.