FRANK BERRY
Frank Berry is a Dublin-born director whose career began with ten years of community filmmaking and television. This work led to his critically acclaimed IFTA nominated feature-documentary BALLYMUN LULLABY (2011) winner of the SDGI Directors Guild of America’s Directors Finders Award which screened at numerous film festivals around the world including DOC NYC and TIFF Kids. His next film I USED TO LIVE HERE (2014), a drama that deals with suicide clusters among teenagers, won the Best First Feature Award at the Galway Film Fleadh 2014, and was nominated for 3 IFTA awards. Frank’s latest feature film MICHAEL INSIDE, had its world premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh 2017 where it won the Best Irish Film Award. The film went on to win the Audience Award at the Cork Film Festival 2017 and was recently nominated for five IFTA Awards, winning the award for Best Film 2018. Frank teaches film production at Cólaiste Dhúlaigh College of Further Education in Coolock.

Director’s statement
During the production of my previous film I USED TO LIVE HERE, I spent a lot of time with young people from the disadvantaged community of Killinarden in west Tallaght, and it was during this time that I had the idea for MICHAEL INSIDE. While working in Killinarden I noticed that many young people in the area were already living with feelings of defeat and failure. Those who had left school early would often appear from their beds in the afternoon, and go to bed very late. They didn’t always occupy the same time-­zone as their peers who were in school or working, and this further separated them. Many of them couldn’t really identify much meaning in their lives, and they punctuated their boredom with the thrill of mischief. The youth workers I was working with brought out the best in many of the them, and through those relationships you could see young people’s potential. But as time went by and those young people got older, I could see the distancing that occurs in many, and the power the negative elements from their area could have. I thought of a film that might highlight the vulnerability of teenagers who don’t necessarily want to be criminals, but who, due to the circumstances of their environment, could easily become part of the prison population. My initial impulse was to simply put that path up on the screen in an Irish context, through a story that would have the potential to reaffirm what many people know to be true, to enlighten others, and to make an impression on many – especially young people who might benefit from seeing lives familiar to theirs in a big picture.