Two films by students at Dunboyne College of Further Education will soon compete for top prizes at European film festivals, marking another milestone for one of the nation’s fastest growing college film departments. Limerence, written and directed by Mark Conlon as part of a college project last year, has been selected for competition at Fright Nights Film Festival, held in Pasching, Austria. The eleven-minute sci-fi short will be among the first films screened at this year’s festival, described by Film Freeway as “one of the world’s largest genre film festivals for horror”.
Conlon, who will travel from his Rathcoffey home to attend the October 16th screening has said that he “will forever be grateful for the opportunity to make the film [and] couldn’t have done it without my amazing team and [DCFE Film Teacher] Ronan Power”.
Limerence’s extensive crew also includes DCFE students Jayde Forde (Mullingar), Conor Yardley (Ratoath), Aoife Clegg (Clonsilla), Oisin Boothman (Celbridge), Aaron Larkin (Dunboyne), Jinx Ward (Ongar), Pawel Krawczyk (Clonsilla). The film stars Max Carey (Navan), Dean McDevitt, Holly Lynch (Dunboyne), and Jack O’Gorman (Dunboyne).
Limerence – Lead picture, the crew on set with Mark Conlon far right.
Former DCFE student Hanna Carr (Ratoath) is also preparing for her red-carpet debut, after her final year film was selected for competition at the Orinica Film Festival in Carrara, Italy. Carr’s horror short At What Cost? stars DCFE film students Holly Lynch (Dunboyne) and Sean Murphy Hazzard (Ratoath), and will screen at the Italian festival on September 5th. Carr, whose college achievements have secured her advanced entry into second year of Film at DKIT, said that “the filmmaking process was challenging, but having seen the results, I would gladly do it all again’”.
DCFE Film Teacher Ronan Power is thrilled with his students’ festival selections, remarking that he is “incredibly proud of the hard work these students have put in over the past two years, and I have no doubt that they will achieve great things in the future”.
Conlon and Carr’s successes have arrived during an exciting time for the DCFE film department, which has doubled in size each year since 2021. To accommodate increasing demand, the college has introduced a highly popular two-year HND Film course, which runs alongside its QQI level five course in Film and Media Production.
“Last year’s DCFE students are entering the industry and third level film degrees during a period of unparalleled success for Irish film”, notes Power. “I can easily see one of these students becoming the next Martin McDonagh or Jim Sheridan. The “craic pack” better watch out!”
