Dónal Foreman

Donal Foreman has been making films since he was 11 years old. Since then, he has written, directed, produced and shot dozens of short films, ranging from comedy to documentary, and from drama to experimental. His teenage years were occupied with the creation of a series of twisted comedies that screened four years in a row at the Fresh Film Festival in Limerick, picking up awards in 2001, 2002 and 2003. In 2003, at the age of 17, his film The Unmentionable won first prize and the audience award, and went on to be screened in the IFI "First Cut" showcase, and in the Galway Film Fleadh shorts section. A section of it was also screened on RTE;. Tony Keily of Film Ireland wrote that the film "could stand with the very best short cinema this country has produced in recent years." Since then, Donal has become a member of the board of directors for the Fresh, and has appeared several times on RTE; radio and TV promoting the festival. In his four years at the National Film School at IADT, he focused on character-driven dramas, and his shorts have been screened in the Galway Film Fleadh, the Irish Film Institute, the Cork Film Centre, the Kerry Film Festival and internationally in Italy, Hungary, Argentina, the Phillipines, Alaska and Los Angeles. In 2007, a retrospective of his experimental and documentary work was organised by the Cork Film Centre alongside the work of the great Irish experimental filmmaker Vivienne Dick. As a freelance film critic, Donal has been published in Cahiers du Cinema, Film Ireland, Experimental Conversations, Estudios Irlandeses, Karnival, Start Magazine, Filmmakers Alliance Magazine in LA, the Berliner Zeitung in Germany, and the Manilla Bulletin, the largest daily newspaper in the Phillipines. He has also worked as a film workshop facilitator for young people, a lecturer in the Dublin Business School, a promo director for Irish Modern Dance Theatre, and as a film programmer for Dublin's recently established Experimental Film Club. He is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Campus and recently developed a feature film script as part of the Irish/Scottish/Estonian co-production programme ENGAGE.