Irish Women's Short Film Festival

Celebrate Irish Women Storytellers through their films and discussion. Let's bring the diaspora together! The Irish Women's Short Film Festival was born from many conversations about what it is to be an Irish woman and have a shared love of film. After sold out-screenings in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney, Australia, the festival is coming to the Irish Cultural Centre! Co-founded by Orlaith Carr and Jeanne McInerney, two women of different generations and artistic perspectives, the festival grew out of a shared belief that Irish women's stories deserve to be seen, celebrated, and heard across the world. Orlaith brings over ten years of experience working across the arts and culture sector, with a practice spanning film, theatre, and Irish language work. Jeanne was born in Chicago to an Irish Catholic family. She’s a couple of generations older with a background in film and theater production. Her life's work has been bringing people together across lines of identity, culture, and experience. Although Jeanne was raised deeply within Irish culture, she also grew up in that strange in-between space familiar to many in the diaspora: culturally Irish, emotionally Irish, shaped by Irish stories and Catholicism and community, yet never fully “from” Ireland either. There is a kind of longing in many diaspora women for spaces that affirm that layered identity rather than asking us to simplify it. Orlaith was raised in Ireland and when she emigrated a few years ago, she went in search of the younger Irish community she could connect with as her home away from home. Joining the local GAA and reconnecting with her Irish Culture whilst miles away from Ireland. When the two came together, they found a common thread, a longing for spaces where the layered experience of being Irish and a woman could be explored without simplification. The festival was the answer to that longing. Every film in the program is directed by an Irish woman or a woman of the Irish diaspora. Together, they explore the moments that shape a life, identity, grief and loss, motherhood and family, finding one's voice, and reclaiming purpose and selfhood. This is not just a film festival. It is a gathering. A homecoming. A conversation that keeps growing!