Fastnet scoops famous director

An award winning director has been added to the line up for an upcoming festival in West Cork.

Aisling Walsh will take part in a Q&A following the screening of ‘Song for a Raggy Boy’ which she directed.

Aisling's work has screened at festivals around the world winning and has several accolades including a BAFTA TV Award for ‘Room at the Top’, an Irish Film and Television Award and a Canadian Screen Award for her direction of ‘Maudie’.

Not afraid to cover challenging subjects, Walsh made her first film in 1989, ‘Joyriders’, a tense drama about a grieving couple who move to the west of Ireland to start a new life. This led to a busy career in television, working as a director on ‘The Bill’, ‘Doctor Finlay’, ‘Roughnecks’ and Lynda La Plante's ground-breaking crime drama, ‘Trial & Retribution’. Aisling returned to the big screen to make ‘Song for a Raggy Boy’, one of the first Irish films to directly address the thorny issue of clerical abuse.

Her subsequent work for television includes ‘Fingersmith’ and ‘Wallander’. Her features also include ‘Daisy Chain’ and most recently ‘Elizabeth is Missing’, a television drama film, starring Glenda Jackson as Maud, an elderly woman living with dementia who struggles to piece together a double mystery.

The 12th Fastnet Film Festival will run for five days at the end of May in the seaside village of Schull. Fastnet will screen 12 feature films, run 12 workshops and 12 seminars in 12 pop up cinemas in a village that has no cinema.