Last year we were delighted to have a positive response to our pilot Irish language film programme Athrú Amháin / One Change. We are pleased to announce that it will run again in 2023. We will be accepting expressions of interest from January 9th, 2023.

In January 2022 First Cut! Youth Film Festival launched its first filmmaking through Irish programme. This competition was an initiative for young filmmakers to make films in the Irish language. The competition invited short films as Gaeilge with a focus on one action we can all take to tackle the urgent topic of climate change. The response to this first venture into encouraging filmmaking in our native language amongst young people was very positive with 30 schools, youth groups & individual young people making short films in the Irish language about their responses to Climate Change.

We are delighted to let you know have now secured funding from the Arts Council, Cork County Council and Cork Local Creative Youth Partnership to further develop this programme for First Cut Youth Film Festival 2023.

All you need to do is create a one minute long film as Gaeilge that says something important about the environment—there are so many angles with this theme, settle on one important to you—and send it in to us at firstcutfestinfo@gmail.com 

The deadline for submissions is February 28th! For more details, download the Information Pack here.

The films will be on the big screen on Thursday, March 9th at The Regal Cinema and be in the running for an award. Last year, the short films as Gaeilge were screened both at a special festival event at The Regal Cinema to an audience of over 80 young people on Thursday, March 10th and subsequently, all were screened online & on social media platforms post-festival over a 10-day period.

Growth in Irish-language filmmaking has been bolstered by recent high-profile successes: Black ’47, Arracht, Foscadh and An Cailín Ciúin. We are aware of new interest and increased opportunities for young people who have fluency in Irish in this now flourishing industry. In addition, from a festival point of view, this is about meeting the needs of young people to create their stories in film in a language in which they are fluent. We want to encourage this.