The annual Fastnet Film Festival, taking place between Wednesday May 22 and Sunday May 26 in venues across the West Cork village of Schull, has landed a scoop for its 2024 opening screening.
The competition introduced on Wednesday night that Ransom ’79, a documentary movie charting late reporter and campaigner Charlie Bird as he pursued his last story whereas coping with motor neurone illness, will open this 12 months’s installment with a particular occasion on the Schull Harbour Hotel.
It’s a narrative as vivid as any that Bird pursued in a five-decade profession on the beat for RTÉ — in 2021, he obtained the Garda file of a secret operation to foil a ransom risk from 1979, the place a felony gang threatened to destroy the Irish economic system by releasing foot and mouth illness into the nationwide herd until paid £5 million.
But on the outset of Bird’s investigations, the reporter observed what could be the primary signs of motor-neurone illness, a analysis that will change his life and lead him to the Climb With Charlie fundraising marketing campaign, earlier than his passing in March of 2024.
Enlisting the assistance of journalist and author Colin Murphy, Bird stayed with the story, chasing leads, interviewing outstanding figures of the time, and looking for the folks on the centre of the calls for — at the same time as his situation took its course.
“An investigation right into a weird crime, a revisiting of a troubled time in Irish historical past, a celebration of journalistic integrity and a portrait of human resilience, Ransom ’79 is basically a narrative of somebody confronting his mortality,” says a press release issued by the competition.
“Through this race in opposition to time, Charlie not solely seeks to unravel a historic thriller but in addition to cement his last legacy. Sadly he’s not right here to see it being screened at its first movie competition.”
The screening occasion will function a Q&A session with director Colm Quinn, producer John Kelleher, and affiliate producers Claire Bird & Colin Murphy, moderated by Niamh Fagan, Project Manager with Screen Ireland.
Meanwhile, different highlights of the competition in Schull embrace a dialogue between UK actress Daisy Edgar Jones and Lenny Abrahamson, the director who labored together with her on Normal People.
