Irish screen culture, from craft to release.
Film Ireland Podcast follows the work behind Irish film, from emerging LGBTQIA filmmakers to VFX supervisors, producers, writers, and festival voices. Its conversations are practical and scene-aware, often tied to new releases, mentorship programmes, live events, and the realities of getting screen work made.
PRESS PLAY
Film Ireland Podcast is a substantial interview archive for Irish cinema and the wider screen industries. Its centre is not celebrity chatter, but the actual work of making, developing, financing, staging, and presenting films. Recent episodes move from emerging LGBTQIA filmmakers in the starGAZE mentorship programme to directors, producers, screenwriters, festival figures, and VFX supervisors. The format is straightforward and welcoming. Guests are usually introduced through a current film, event, programme, or festival context, then invited to describe their practice and route into the industry. That gives the show a useful documentary quality. It catches people at specific career moments: promoting a feature, reflecting on a festival panel, explaining a training scheme, or talking through how a creative background became a screen career. The conversations often stay close to the practical machinery of film. Development slates, public funding, production companies, casting, financing, networking, and international markets all appear as ordinary parts of the discussion. There is also room for craft. The VFX episode, recorded during Render Festival, gives attention to CG supervision, on-set work, immersive technology, animation, gaming, and the value of first-hand access to working professionals. The starGAZE conversations broaden the frame, foregrounding queer filmmakers and creatives speaking about fine art, theatre, producing, performance, directing, and non-linear routes into film. Release-focused episodes bring in the dramatic worlds of heists, coming-of-age mysteries, thrillers, and Irish-language drama without turning the show into simple promotion. Festival recordings add another texture, with local stories, market realities, and the experience of working across public funding and production. The pace is conversational and generous. It gives guests time to explain themselves. For listeners, the reward is cumulative: a grounded picture of Irish screen culture as a network of people, schemes, films, festivals, and hard decisions. Film Ireland Podcast is best understood as a trade-aware cultural record, one that treats cinema as both art and labor.
Made for: For film fans, emerging filmmakers, screen students, festival followers, and industry listeners who want practical context around Irish cinema and screen production. It especially suits people interested in how projects, careers, and creative communities develop.
What sets it apart: The show pairs release conversations with on-the-ground industry access, so new films sit beside mentorship schemes, VFX events, festival panels, and funding realities. Its value is the breadth of Irish screen voices gathered in one steady archive.
Podcast by Film Ireland
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Detailed interviews turn filmmaking's uncertain path from script to screen into clear, practical conversation.
Film Ireland Podcast treats screen culture as a working practice, building interviews around how projects are written, financed, directed and brought before an audience.
Four optioned scripts, zero guaranteed films: your backstage pass leads straight to the funding meeting.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded festival episode that makes the business of Irish screen development feel real.
Film Ireland uses Foyle Film Festival as a clear snapshot of Irish screen industries, moving from a chat with Evan King into a conversation with David Pope and then a live panel with Dervla Regan and Louise Gallagher.
A practical, engaging conversation about screenwriting, festival context, and the long road from script to screen.
Sheena Lambert's conversation sits neatly between a film-festival profile and a working-writer check-in. It focuses on Borcha, the Irish-language feature set in a rural village during an all-Ireland weekend in 1975, while also making room for Lambert's larger craft concerns.
A grounded craft conversation on why writers belong on set and how serialized shows keep their threads intact.
State of the Arts is sharpest when it gets into the working machinery of serialized television. Sean Ryan lays out how a showrunner can trust writers while still holding a close creative line, from story breaking and script approval to uncredited line edits.
Jay Worth explains how visual effects serve story while giving productions room for smart creative risk.
Jay Worth's path into visual effects comes across as steady, practical, and earned, moving through site coordination, clip coordination, travel coordination, set and office PA work, and eventually a coordinator role at Digital Domain.
A washed-up pop star's Belfast booking opens into British money, memory, and history.
The Film Ireland Podcast gives Nostalgia a thoughtful airing, following a premise with an uneasy comic charge: an English, washed-up pop star from 1986, now working as an IT entrepreneur, is asked to perform at a Belfast battalion's centenary celebrations.
Four filmmakers reflect on responsibility, authenticity and the pop-cultural memories behind their short films.
Film Ireland's conversation with four filmmakers funded through the National Talent Academy's Short Film Schemes works best when it sits with the pressure around a world premiere at the Dublin International Film Festival.
John Butler traces the practical leap from comedy into Irish drama, with craft and commercial instinct in view.
John Butler's route through sketch comedy, commercials, documentary work, TV, shorts and then features gives the episode a clear spine: how The Stag became his first feature, and what that taught him about getting a comic idea onto the screen.
John Butler reflects on moving from shorts to features and the personal ideas that shape his films.
John Butler's path through shorts, commercials, documentary and television gives the episode a grounded shape, treating filmmaking as both an artistic pursuit and a practical trade.
Doctor Who fandom, shelved and remembered.
Wrestling, business, politics, and pop culture unsanded.
This episode features interviews with James Hudson, founder of the Trans Image Trans Experience (TITE) Film Festival; Theda Hammel, director of the debut film 'Stress Positions'; and Gary McHugh, director of Young Irish Filmmakers.
The Film Ireland podcast partners with GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival and the National Talent Academy to interview three Stargaze mentorship participants: Venus Patel, Jack Warren, and Stephen T.
This episode features an interview with participants of the Stargaze mentorship program, discussing their backgrounds and work as emerging LGBTQIA filmmakers in Ireland.
This episode features an interview with three emerging LGBTQIA filmmakers—Billy Buckley, Eleanor Rogers, and Lewis Doherty—discussing their participation in the Stargaze mentorship program and their work in Irish cinema.
This episode features an interview with director/co-writer Colin McIvor discussing his new heist film 'No Ordinary Heist', which is set for release in Irish cinemas.
This episode features interviews with VFX professionals discussing their work, the importance of industry events like the Render Festival, and career networking in visual effects.
This episode features an interview with producer Laura McNicholas about her coming-of-age feature film 'Spilt Milk', which follows a young detective in Ireland.
This episode features an interview with director Brendan Muldowney about his thriller film 'One Last Deal' and his work in Irish cinema.
Film Ireland Podcast's "On the Ground: David Pope, Dearbhla Regan & Louise Gallagher at Foyle Film Festival" follows Foil Film Festival in Derry, where Evan King says the event will celebrate its 39th year and remains Academy Award- and BAFTA-qualifying.
Film Ireland Podcast records a live interview at Washington DC's 20th Capital Irish Film Festival, presented by Solace Nua, and frames the conversation around the Irish-language feature Borcha.
Film Ireland Podcast's State of the Arts features Sean Ryan on The Night Agent season 3, with Ryan tracing how Jamie Vanderbilt's company raised the book rights in March 2020.
Film Ireland contributor Will Penn interviews harpist Joy Shannon about her late-November album In the Forest Singing Sourless, which features Ruth Tolkien and Maria Franz and revives "Faramir," a song she wrote about 20 years ago.
Jay Worth traces his path from theater major and set PA to Emmy-winning VFX supervisor on Alias, Lost, Fringe, Westworld, and Fallout.
Film Ireland Podcast speaks with Kathryn Ferguson about 'Nostalgie,' the BAFTA-nominated short built from Wendy Erskine's story 'Nostalgie de la Boue' and set around Belfast's centenary event.
Film Ireland Podcast brings together Clare Monnelly, Louise Bruton, Sodiq Ajibola Abiola and Adele Kenny to talk about the National Talent Academy of Film and TV Drama Short Film Schemes and their world premieres at the Dublin International Film Festival on 20 February.
John Butler returns to the Film Ireland Podcast to discuss The Sacred Vows, which is available on RT Player with episode three airing at 9.30 on RT1 this Sunday.
Film Ireland speaks with John Butler, the writer-director behind The Stag, Handsome Devil, Poppy Chulo, and the new series The Sacred Vows.
Host Des Doyle introduces the podcast and guest Steven S.
This episode features an interview with bestselling Irish author Catherine Doyle about her writing career, including her YA novel The Dagger and the Flame and other works.
This inaugural episode of State of the Arts features an interview with acclaimed Irish director-producer-writer Ciarán Donnelly, discussing his work on major TV shows like The Wheel of Time, Vikings, and Kin, and his insights into the streaming television industry.
This episode features a live Q&A with filmmaker Ross Whittaker about his documentary 'Birdsong', recorded at a Culture Night event supported by the Comishewn Ymian Sound and Vision Scheme, which celebrates its 20th anniversary.