COMMISSIONING EDITOR THOMAS POOL INTERVIEWS COMEDIAN AND CAMPAIGNER AILISH MCCARTHY

Thomas Pool: How did you get your start in comedy?

Ailish McCarthy: In 2018, I joined the Gaiety School of Acting short course for comedy, because, when I went to college, I turned my back on being creative. But when I finished my masters, I thought “remember when you had fun?” So, the comedy course was a really good way to restart my creativity. I’d set aside time, three hours a week, to write, to laugh. It was a great course. I would recommend it to anybody. I think it’s still running, which is a great indicator of success for the school and those delivering the course.

At the very end of the course, we all got to present our ten-minute standup to friends and family. I then started to approach comedy clubs, asking if I could do a five or ten-minute set or participate in an open mic. After doing this for a while, I was approached by another club who asked me if I wanted to come and do a short set on their stage.

Then it just snowballed from there. I kept getting invited, I kept showing up, I kept on going. Then I started to apply for stages in Vancouver, Scotland, England, and all over Ireland.

TP: You’ve been helping lead the campaign to get comedy included in the Arts Act. How did you first become involved in this effort, and how do you feel it is progressing?

AMcC: It was January 2023 and I wanted to write a show. I thought about applying for the Arts Council Agility Award, in order to develop and research the new show, with the aim of touring once it was finished. Then I learned that the Arts Council doesn’t fund comedy, so I shelved my idea of writing a show just to investigate this. I had a look at the Arts Act, and comedy wasn’t explicitly listed the way theatre, music, and visual arts are, despite the fact that it is a performing art form.

I wrote to the Department of Culture, Communications, and Sport, and wrote separately to the Arts Council of Ireland, to ask whether they regard comedy as an art form. The Department came back and said, yes, it is technically in the Arts Act under theatre as a subgenre. The Arts Council, however, came back to say that they don’t fund comedy because they don’t fund commercial arts. However, I noticed that there are other art forms that have a commercial aspect, like music, that they do fund. So, I began this crusade, to get comedy explicitly included in the Arts Act.

As an artist, I put my practice on the backburner to discover why this group of artists are being excluded. Thankfully, I got some support from Minding Creative Minds at the very beginning. They gave me a platform at their annual summit to discuss art forms that are also feeling excluded, like musical theatre or line dancing. Their director, Emma Olohan Sarramida, introduced me to TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh in 2024, and I spoke to him about the dilemma comedians in Ireland were facing.

There’s nothing explicitly stating that comedy should be excluded from Arts Council funding; I think this was just a decision made years ago that hasn’t been challenged. Aengus had the same view as me, and after the general election, he was assigned to the Committee of Arts and Culture, where he worked to put forward an amendment to the Arts Act to explicitly include comedy.

We started to get support from TD Brian Brennan of Fine Gael. The new Minister for Culture Partick O’Donovan has also been very supportive of the amendment. It’s great to see opposition and government coming together to state that comedians are artists and that they should be funded and supported.

Then in November 2025, it just took off. I had an interview with Joe.ie. I think I got something like 90,000 views in 48 hours, which then meant that Prime Time took up the story, and I had an interview with them that got around a quarter of a million views. Then it got onto BBC, the Financial Times, and Sky News, which was great, because initially, I was finding it difficult to get the word out.

Then in December 2025, after two years of campaigning, the Arts Council made a statement that they’re going to start including comedy in their existing schemes. I’m also aware that they have advertised for a panel of comedians to review applications. Culture Ireland has just announced that they’re looking for panellists, to review upcoming applications to include comedy in their funding.

It’s phenomenal. It feels like a totally different climate to when I started this campaign. A lot of comedians I know who have emigrated are saying that they might actually move home now. I can’t wait to hear about the first recipient of comedy funding, whoever it may be. I hope I get a ticket to their show!

TP: Your debut stand-up show for Scene+Heard in February, titled ‘Me, Myself, and Ireland’, focuses a lot on this issue. Can you walk us through your process in creating this performance?

AMcC: I love Scene+Heard. The festival promotes new work and is a springboard for getting into other festivals around the country, or even to international festivals. I had applied because I felt like this was a good, happy, inspiring, and uplifting story, and given the climate of the world right now, we kind of need those.

It was a huge challenge for me because, even though I’ve been doing comedy for six or seven years, this was my longest show yet. It just kind of made sense to me that my first show would be a biographical standup of how I tried to get the Arts Council to recognise comedy.

I think the first draft I made just wasn’t enjoyable to sit through, and thankfully, I had the awareness of realising that I’m very close to the issue, and it was too cathartic. So I scrapped the first draft, and then asked myself: “What do I want the audience members to take away from this?”

I realised that what I’m effectively doing is creating a playbook for an art form to be recognised within the funding structures of Ireland. So, if someone in the musical theatre space wanted to know how to do that for themselves, they should come to this show. It would be like a tutorial for them.

My comedy is very particular to an Irish audience, so I don’t do well when I travel over to the UK. I remember I once made a joke during a set in the UK that their country had become more dog friendly because they now have a new King Charles. The audience completely turned against me! So, I do better at Irish gigs than I do in the UK.

I’m very good at observational comedy, in terms of Irish culture, so a lot of ‘Me, Myself, and Ireland’ was sticking to that voice. It was something I was very, very proud of. There’s also a couple of visual jokes in there as well. I was very nervous because I felt a lot like the Australian break-dancer, Ray Gun, at the 2024 Olympics. She had loads of qualifications in dance, but unfortunately, when she performed, the reaction wasn’t positive from the public. And now breakdancing is no longer considered a sport within the Olympics after that performance. The stakes were just as high for me, as someone who was campaigning for comedy to be recognised as an art form! But the performance was so well received. A member of government attended the show in an individual capacity, and members of The Arts Council staff came to the show as individuals too and really enjoyed it. That was my goal. I wanted anybody who came to the show to feel uplifted. It was a good news story. But it was even more fulfilling when people enjoyed it.

I’m very excited to be touring the show. I’ve already spoken to venues in Clonmel, Sligo, Bray, and Dublin and I’m talking to somebody in Kilkenny currently. I think it’s a really uplifting show and it’ll probably tour for one or two years. But I’m taking a step back from the crusade – I just want to be an artist and a comedian now. But I’m really happy with the results, that comedians now feel like they’re being supported.

TP: Lastly, are there any other projects you’re working on? What’s next for you?

AMcC: I’m doing a radio and podcasting course at the moment – I love radio. I was presenting a show with Mary Claire Fitzpatrick for six months last year, and it was something I really enjoyed doing. I think in terms of comedy, it’ll really help – one hand feeding the other and so on. And then I have a wedding coming up in September, so I have enough on my plate at the moment!

Ailish McCarthy is a comedian and one of the campaigners for the recognition of comedy in the Arts Act.

@thesleepycomedian

Thomas Pool is the Content and Production Editor of The Visual Artists’ News Sheet and the Commissioning Editor of the miniVAN.

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WRITER AND COMEDIAN JACK DOLAN INTERVIEWS COMEDIAN ROGER O’SULLIVAN ABOUT HIS ACT AND HIS ‘DARK NOSTALGIA’ 8-BIT VIDEOS.

Jack Dolan: What got you into comedy?

Roger O’Sullivan: I think it was watching stuff like The Panel on Irish television when I was growing up. There was a period of time in the early 2000s when comedy was actually quite good in Ireland, when great stuff was on TV from some of the top comedians – Dylan Moran, Tommy Tiernan, and Dara O’Briain. This was during some very formative years for me.

JD: You started posting the 8-bit style stuff online, mimicking video game cutaway scenes. What brought you to this as a concept to mine for comedy?

ROS: I’ve always been really into video games and that specific aesthetic of point-and-click adventure games of the 90s. Sometimes what’s interesting is that they look rubbish, but they were operating within the budgetary means that they had. So, I felt like if it was something I’m just doing in my bedroom, it will look rubbish, but the original products looked bad as well, so it’s actually quite easy to hit that same tone. I think a lot of social media is nostalgia bait, so I wanted to generate a kind of dark nostalgia for shit things.

JD: It’s interesting that you brought up this dark nostalgia idea. When you were initially posting those videos online, do you think it allowed you to talk and give characters more scope than you would have in a traditional ‘talking head’ video?

ROS: I think that there was definitely an opportunity there, as the format launders clichés and tropes through a more interesting lens. It gives you license to state that this is a character in a video game, so they’re stock by nature – the graphics don’t have to be very well realised. You can really ham it up and do things to make yourself look more stiff than you really are, or play around with the frame rate on the video when you’re editing, to make it even more hokey. There’s been times when I’ve had the perfect take and audio, but I’ve edited it to make it look worse.

JD: Your current show, ‘Fekken’, named for the fighting game Tekken, is quite PS1 imagery heavy. What was your desired outcome, in bringing the PlayStation visuals and these videos into the show? How did it facilitate the stand up?

ROS: In hindsight, it was very lucky how it all came together in the final product of the show, which was about my relationship with my dad and growing up in Ireland in the 90s. In Ireland at that time, you didn’t have the American High School clichés of the jocks or the nerds or whatever. Everyone was into the PS1, and PlayStations were in practically every household, so it’s a big part of my nostalgia for that time, and gives the show its aesthetic. I wanted the ending of the show to be a Tekken-style fight between me and my dad; that’s the big finale. At the same time, I was making these 8-bit videos on Instagram, so I knew that the audience that I was building there would also probably relate to a lot of the stuff that I was putting in the show.

JD: How’s the tour going so far?

ROS: The tour’s going well! I’ve never toured before so I’m learning lots about touring. Initially I had a more limited amount of dates, with a very small initial run most of them sold out, so I was asked like ‘do you want to do a tour extension? Do you want to do more dates?’ So I went for it, and I learned the limits of myself in a good way. I had to figure out how much of my audience translates into ticket sales – not to be too mercenary about it. I think the big thing is even when they don’t sell out, it’s more than I’ve ever sold in that place. Because I’ve never been able to sell tickets before.

JD: When you incorporate the 8-bit videos into your show, they build a tension throughout. Do you think embracing this stylised approach made it easier to address more serious topics, or do you think it’s something you could have dealt with purely through standup?

ROS: I think the video element made it easier for the audience, because the aesthetic is really grounded in that time. It’s very easy to talk about these things yet feel removed from them, whereas I think it helps people launch themselves back into that world. I think a lot of the show is quite positive about certain things back then, and it’s good to appreciate what your childhood was like. I do think that having those visual elements helps bring people along, more than just text or pure standup.

JD: When you started off doing standup, did you see yourself embracing this visual aspect during live performance?

ROS: When I started, I was quite puritanical with stand up. I didn’t foresee the visual aspects crossing over, but I was very slow to do social media because it doesn’t come naturally to me. If I didn’t do standup, I probably wouldn’t even have social media, which I use as a promotional tool. I think, over the years, seeing other comedians doing exciting things using AV elements in their shows, made me realise that you can actually make amazing things in these shortform spaces. Ultimately, I think what drives a lot of people to do stand up, myself included, is the need for instant feedback. As easy as it is to be cynical about social media platforms, I think they are actually a great way to truly be a micro-budget filmmaker, find your audience, and figure out your style. The great thing about Instagram is you can be seen by people immediately and you can get quite a big following.

JD: After winning ‘Best Newcomer’ at the Comedians’ Choice Awards Edinburgh 2025, you’ve been working on a new show, what can you tell us about it?

ROS: A lot of the new show is still about Ireland, a bit about missing Ireland or not living there anymore. I have this idea on how to start it visually – it’s almost a dawn and still dark, and throughout the course of the hour the sun slowly starts to rise, and you see more and more bits of the landscape, and towards the end of the show you have this realisation that the different bits of the landscape are actually all of these things I’ve talked about in the show. But the problem is I can’t make that yet because I don’t yet know what I’m going to talk about in the show.

Roger O’Sullivan is a comedian, his show ‘Fekken’ is currently on tour.

@rogerocomedy

Jack Dolan is a writer and comedian.

@goodenoughgang

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WRITER AND COMEDIAN LAUREN O’NEILL INTERVIEWS COMEDIAN, ACTOR, AND WRITER MARIA CUNNINGHAM ABOUT HER ACT, PARTICULARLY HER STYLE OF ‘CLOWNING’.

Lauren O’Neill: How did you become interested in comedy through the style of clowning?

Maria Cunningham: I studied acting in the Gaiety School. In first and second year, we did a week of clowning with Raymond Keane. I had never thought about pursuing clowning before that. I went in wanting to be an actor, and came out wanting to be an actor, clown, and a writer. I think ‘clown’ will always influence my acting. It’s opened up a whole new set of tools to play with regarding acting.

Clowning is this artform based in connection, honesty and failure. It plays with the most fundamental and base level parts of being a human. There’s loads of improvisation and connection with the audience. It’s less like a performance and more like a conversation between the clown and the audience.

In terms of work, there’s more control with clowning, because I make my own work. A lot of acting is auditioning and asking for permission to act, hoping that someone will give you a role – unless you write your own play or make your own film, which is something I love doing. But clowning is something you can just get up and do, whether at an open mic or a fundraiser cabaret night.

LON: How do the aesthetic demands of clowning influence your creative process  differently to stand up?

MC: For me, the very first thing that happens in the process of creating a comedic character is collecting things. I’ll be in a charity shop and I’ll find an object that I like or a piece of clothing that interests me. I’ll get it, not knowing what I’ll use it for. I have this collection of things and the next step is thinking about what I would find enjoyable and exciting. If I want to crowd surf, how am I going to make that happen? What character can I create to help Maria crowd surf? It’s a really fun way of creating work because you’re just following an impulse to facilitate a sensation that you wish to feel. 

I’ll watch a really good stand-up show and think “this is magic.” I have no idea how this is working because I don’t really write structured jokes. The way my brain works is visual comedy. At home, instead of writing jokes, I’m doing freaky movements in my mirror.  

Sometimes I include props and costumes that have the potential for failure, if they fall off or break or move in a weird way – that influences the comedy more. For a clown, failure is a gift. When something doesn’t work the way you want it to work, that’s the real magic. Making my own props and costumes is an important step because it allows me to slow down, sit still, and meditate. The more elaborate the costume, the more potential there is for mishaps, which is what I love.

LON: Does the scripting of shows influence costuming, or do the jokes stem from the visual identity of the characters?

MC: The words tend to come last for me. I wasn’t confident in secondary school English class. Structured writing was never something I was good at. Clowning appeals to me because it feels more natural for me to create a visual or physical joke. A stand-up comedian might write down a joke and ask “is that funny?” It’s the words and the structure of it that might be funny. I’ll try something on in the mirror and I’ll wonder whether that’s funny or not. I’ll start with the visual concept. Maybe the way it moves influences the movement of my body, and, having a background in dance and circus acrobatics when I was younger, I’m confident in experimenting with my physicality and my movement. The costume will always inform the physicality and the physicality will always inform the costume.

LON: The performances often incorporate adult or suggestive themes. What draws you to explore this, particularly through costume design?

MC: I like to make work that deals with taboo themes because, as a woman, growing up in Ireland, I’ve learnt that shame is a very useful tool for an oppressor. I don’t want to sound too intense here, but shame and secrecy are really useful to silence people. As a performer, you have an incredible opportunity to take a theme or subject and put it into the spotlight.

For example, by putting our show ‘Porno’, a clown show about the communication around sex, into the spotlight, we’re trying to release some of that shame. Especially with comedy, you can amplify the scenario and make it absurd. You can have the big boobs and the big vagina and everything is kind of over the top, so it allows people to laugh while we’re still discussing those kinds of themes. That’s why the absurd visual aspects are helpful because they create a little bit of distance between people and reality and that makes the subject less scary.

From a technical point, if you’re thinking about making people laugh, it’s about tension and release. Tension is created in a room when you present a taboo subject. People are holding their breath, then when something ridiculous or unexpected happens, that tension is released and people laugh. That’s why it’s called comic relief, because it’s actual relief.

LON: How does audience interaction come into play during your act?

MC: The audience members will generally help Clown Maria to try to achieve something. We might fail miserably, which can be very funny, or we might succeed and the audience gets to enjoy the triumph. But there will always be a want for the character and a journey they’re trying to go on.

‘Porno’was created by me and my clown partner, Saorla Rodger – we have a clowning duo called Lipstink. The bulk of the show was improvised within a structure we had built. We wanted to focus on the fact that in Ireland, we grow up with very little sexual education in schools, and Irish people are typically not very confident at having those discussions. The concept was that we were Ireland’s top live sex stars and were on the last night of our nationwide tour. We go to attempt our big move and we have an accident, causing us to have concussion. We’ve forgotten how to have sex. There’s Giorgio and Amanda, they’re naked and they’re ready, but they don’t know what the steps are. So, we ask the audience to teach us how to have sex. It was so beautiful and hilarious to hear what people said. We wanted to play with how the words we use can be mixed up. People using innuendos made it funny and so easy to misconstrue the words and fully act out what they were saying, but without the understanding of what it actually meant, which created hilarious scenarios.

LON: Are there any upcoming shows you’re developing?

MC: My next performance will be in ‘The Hoes of Tralee’ run by The Wild Geeze. I’m currently further developing ‘Porno’ with Saorla and a new play ‘Dole Bots’into full length shows. I always post updates of shows that I’m making or performing in on my Instagram page.

Maria Cunningham is a comedian, actor, writer and clown.

@maria._.cunningham

@lipstink_comedy

Lauren O’Neill is a writer and comedian.

@alexmillercomedy

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THOMAS POOL REVIEWS THE LIGHTKEEPER AT THE DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL.

A lighthouse is a lonely symbol. Often a shorthand in literature, art, and film, the lighthouse represents themes of isolation, caution, and, with each flash of its lamp, hope for a safe harbour. The Lightkeeper (2026) is a film that embodies that forlorn mixture of solitude and hope. In the Light House Cinema, however, it was quite evident that familiarity and community was all around.

The sold-out premiere of The Lightkeeper on 21 February, during the Dublin International Film Festival, was filled with many attendees personally attached to the film. Set on an unnamed island off Ireland’s west coast, the film was shot on location in Donegal. All around me in the theatre, excited Donegal accents flittered around in whispers, with cheers and applause sporadically peppering the showing whenever an extra was recognised. The cinema had the same warm air of fellowship that you’d find in a local theatre production, and there was a great sense of pride and community among the many friends, family, and neighbours in attendance.

Set in 1924, the film centres on Seamus Óg McGrinna, played by Dominic Cooper, who is a lonely man with a lonely profession – a lighthouse keeper. Having lost his wife and child, Seamus spends his free time drinking, and rowing out to sea, waiting for the malevolent spirit, the Each-Uisce (Water Horse), to drown him. However lonely he is, he is not alone. His housekeeper, Maire, played by Sarah Bolger, is deeply devoted and protective of Seamus, and, we suspect, very much in unrequited love with him. Seamus’s routine of drinking in the pub, ferrying himself back to the mainland to pick flowers from his deceased wife’s garden, and then heading back to place them on her grave, fastidiously updating his lightkeeper’s log book, and attempting to drown himself, is interrupted by the separate arrivals of an American widow and a hardline priest.

The priest, Father MacGabhann, played by Aidan Quinn, is the only man on the island with a car. The sputtering of his Oldsmobile, a harbinger of his impending arrival, warns the islanders to start acting piously. The conflict with Seamus begins when the priest enters the pub, his car out of petrol, to request a jerrycan from the barkeep. With a rather dour mass having just concluded, the priest admonishes the men to return home to their families. Seamus, having no surviving family, takes that as exemption – the priest, however, does not.

MacGabhann makes one wonder, what if Father Ted had ruled Craggy Island with an iron fist? Not particularly competent, compelling, or adored, MacGabhann sees Seamus as a figure of resistance – one that must be subdued, lest the rest of his flock begin to question his authority. The priest finds his opening when he discovers Seamus has buried his wife Bridget on the unconsecrated grounds of the lighthouse, next to a memorial for their son, Weeshie.

The American widow, Edith, played by Sarah Gadon, has come to Ireland to try and find a sense of closure. Her husband, a soldier, drowned off the coast of the island when his transport ship sank during a ferocious storm in WWI. Weeshie, it turns out, died that night as well, after he rowed out into the channel to rescue the survivors. Their shared loss from the same tragedy brings Edith and Seamus together, much to Maire’s pain.

The film leaves much unsaid, and the hints of conflict between ancient mythology and the Catholic Church never quite materialise. The power of the priesthood at this time in Irish history is not only political and cultural, but personal as well.

MacGabhann uses the church’s influence to force the hand of the lighthouse commissioners, who demand that Seamus reintern his wife’s remains in the consecrated cemetery. When he refuses, he is told he will be fired. Criticism of this power is ultimately diffused by the end of the film, when after leading a mob to the lighthouse to forcibly remove Bridget’s remains, MacGabhann relents after hearing the trio of pleas from Maire, Edith, and Seamus himself. An uneasy truce is brokered, and the grounds of the lighthouse are consecrated. Unable to let power go completely, MacGabhann gently reminds Seamus that he will now need to put a cross above the garden gate.

The film’s strength truly lies in its visual storytelling. The austere, sharp features of the Donegal coast are heightened by the superb cinematography of Vic Sarin, who is also the director. In one scene, the lighthouse itself, the only source of light at night, gently holds Seamus in a series of vignettes, as he slowly moves in its flashes. These lonely images of darkness and light would be marvellous additions to any photography museum if rendered into stills. At its best, the cinematography resembles Hungarian-American cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond’s work on The Deer Hunter (1978), echoing its use of natural light and expansive landscapes to shape a story about loss and moving forward after unfathomable tragedy.

In his final attempt to join his wife and child, Seamus is finally granted his audience with the shape-shifting spirit, Each-Uisce, who appears to him in the form of his son. Unlike in traditional folklore, where the water-horse drowns and devours its victims, Seamus is carried back up to the surface. As he pulls his skiff ashore, the lonely man at last finds the community that he had been longing for. Indeed, they were all around me in the theatre, roaring with applause.

Thomas Pool is the Content and Production Editor of The Visual Artists’ News Sheet and the Commissioning Editor of the miniVAN.

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PAUL DUNNE REVIEWS NO ORDINARY HEIST AT THE DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026.

Directed by Colin McIvor, No Ordinary Heist (2026) is a heist movie of small, deep settings with large stakes. Eddie Marsan and Éanna Hardwicke face off against each other as the film’s protagonists – Richard and Barry, respectively, who grew up on the same street, and whose fathers had a history. Now, Richard is a bank manager, while Barry is at the bottom of the corporate ladder, though crucially, he holds the keys to the bank vault. A drunken conversation in a seedy pub with a local criminal turns Barry and Richard’s worlds upside down, as their families become kidnapping targets, forcing the pair to pull off the heist.

No Ordinary Heist excels in its exploration of the human cost of criminality, and the set of conditions that would lead people to treat each other with hostility. The negative effects of capitalism, in which individuals feel they must compete for a dwindling pool of resources (in this instance, cold hard cash in the lead up to Christmas) are foregrounded and echoed by a bank robbery (based on a real event), set in Belfast in December 2004, just after the end of The Troubles.

This feeling of discomfort and desperation at the hands of an uncaring system ripples beyond the heist itself. Head security guard Mags (expertly portrayed by Michelle Fairley) is in a constant state of surveillance, not only over the safety of the bank, but her own job security. Meanwhile, Barry struggles to collect subs for his GAA team and Richard must decide who will lose their job just before Christmas. The Australian CEO of the bank doesn’t care who is sacked, whereas Richard must reckon with firing someone he sees every day.

There is a coldness that Director of Photography Damien Elliot exemplifies through long distance, aerial views of Belfast’s skyline and city streets. Fluorescent, blueish, artificial light floods most scenes set in office spaces. The mise-en-scène of each frame exudes feelings, more often than not, of tension and fear. McIvor contrasts homely, domestic interiors with the sterility of the modern bank. We are invited into the homes of Richard and Barry, where love and love-lost both flourish. The Troubles pervade these private settings, exposing the harsh and enduring impact of the conflict on many Northern Irish citizens. Not everyone gets the opportunity to rise up the corporate ladder, and not everyone has a loving home to return to; there are those for whom criminality is the only way to earn a living.

That is not to say that the film attempts to elicit sympathy with the bank robbers; rather that McIvor and Aisling Corristine’s script allows us to access broader, deeper depictions of Belfast beyond its bombings and headline-grabbing tensions. The everyday is at the forefront of this film. The routines we all go through to put food on the table get turned upside down by the bank robbers, as Richard and Barry must cooperate with evil and with each other – and at times, that proves to be the greater challenge. Richard is sceptical of Barry’s presumed innocence or potential involvement in the heist. Prejudice and discrimination linger, even though at the key moments of the film, Barry is the only person who can understand Richard’s predicament.

The decision to include an onscreen countdown and ticking clock in the film score provide constant reminders of what is at stake. Outmoded technology (such as old-school Nokias and landline telephones) tie both Richard and Barry to the bank robbers, while constant worry about phone signal pervades key moments, racketing up the tension.

One is reminded of films like Dog Day Afternoon (1975) or Collateral (2004), in which ordinary citizens get mixed up in extraordinary circumstances. Some find the ability to rise and deliver under pressure where others falter. The desperation of the bank robbers fuels their ingenuity to devise a heist where they never even enter the bank. There is something to admire in this creative and precise plan, which sits in contrast to typical plots of the heist genre, in which we often we see larger-than-life characters, wielding even larger guns, shoving stacks of money into gym bags before peeling off in a stolen vehicle. The calmness of execution and anonymity of the criminals (who are still at large to this day) is particularly appealing and fresh.

No Ordinary Heist is slated for general release on 27 March 2026.

Paul Dunne is a writer and a critic based in Dublin. His writing has appeared in The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices (Unbound, 2021), edited by Paul McVeigh.

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PAUL DUNNE REVIEWS THE MANDARIN-LANGUAGE FILM RESURRECTION AT THE DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL.

The science fiction drama, Resurrection (2025), is a fantastical, psychological exploration of the power and history of cinema. In the world of the film, dreaming has been made illegal, and as a result, everyone is now immortal. However, there are a select few, called deliriants, who choose to dream anyway, and are able to travel through time. At the risk of losing the reader in this complex synopsis, these bounds are simply a framing device that allows director Bi Gan to showcase, reflect, and comment on the role of cinema – and storytelling more broadly – in our lives.

Bi Gan chooses a fractal mode to convey a series of six sequences across five distinct settings. This includes mundane locations such as a busy train station, a dilapidated Buddhist temple, and a dockyard controlled by a criminal gang. There are four vignettes, or ‘dreams’, as we are invited into the minds of several deliriants, who use film to hide from the authorities that have outlawed dreaming. Each dream serves as a separate but connected parable in which the tenets of Buddhist thought are explored: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind. There are various humorous moments that break the fourth-wall, reminding us that this is just a film, as wondrous and epic as it may seem. Bi Gan never forgets the pure, essential essence of cinema as a tool through which to delight, deceive, distract, and reflect us back to ourselves.

Each of the six sequences has its own visual and sonic identity that reflects cinematic innovations across history. We begin in the silent film era, with title cards and a grand orchestral score; there is no dialogue or colour. We then move to a grainy film reel, featuring cascading shadows and multiple shots within mirrors. In the second-last sequence, a 30-minute hand-held tracking shot follows the characters as they move through a world bathed in neon light, to the sounds of a distant rave on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium, all choreographed with gritty perfection.

Dong Jingsong deserves special mention as the cinematographer. In charting the history of cinema, his deconstruction and re-construction of cinematic techniques and language is as bold as I have ever seen. He masterfully and gracefully handles techniques of surrealism, magical realism, stop-motion, and time-lapse as deftly as he does simple two-shot framing devices. It all feels truly collaborative, involving a high-level reading and understanding of Bi Gan’s direction, Zhai Xiaohui’s ambitious script, and the strong and subtle performances, which combine to make this a truly special film.

Resurrection is akin to other seminal works of speculative fiction, such as Stalker (1979) or Children of Men (2006), which portray how humanity survives an imminent dystopia, filled with meaningless wars, fascist bureaucracy, and cultural erasure. However, Resurrection is laden with a lightness, playfulness, well-timed humour, and narrative depth, to create intermeshed layers. This material is challenging yet inviting, experimental yet relatable, and there is a Lynchian quality to it all. For a film as intellectual and metatextual as Resurrection, I found it astonishingly enjoyable.

After seeing Resurrection, I am reminded of two quotes. The first from Bong Joon Ho as he won the Best Picture Oscar® for Parasite (2019): “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you’ll be introduced to so many more amazing films.” The second from David Lynch: “Now if you’re playing the movie on a telephone you will never, in a trillion years, experience the film.” Resurrection is a film that you really should see in the cinema. Yes, you must read the subtitles. And yes, the film is 2 hours and 40 minutes long. However, after ten minutes, you will melt into it. With each ‘dream’ being roughly 40 minutes, you are never far from a change of pace or direction. Resurrection is cinema-as-spectacle, and a fun and fitting tribute to the medium of cinema. In a time when streaming platforms and short-form algorithms have changed how we interact with all media, Resurrection is an epic worth seeing in a dark cinema, surrounded by fellow movie lovers.

Resurrection is slated for general release on 13 March 2026.

Paul Dunne is a writer and a critic based in Dublin. His writing has appeared in The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices (Unbound, 2021), edited by Paul McVeigh.

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CAILEIGH RYAN REVIEWS THE JAPANESE-LANGUAGE FILM, EXIT 8, AT THE DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL.

When someone gives you a Japanese horror film recommendation, it’s one of life’s greatest treats. Japanese filmmakers do it right and do it different, and the Dublin International Film Festival understands this. The Lighthouse Cinema was packed for the sold-out Irish premiere of Exit 8 (2025).

From the hubbub in the queue, it seemed the majority didn’t quite know what we were about to step into: “I don’t know, man, not sure what it’s about, but it’s based off a Japanese video game, I’d say it’ll be good.” The best way to view a new release. No hints, no expectations, just trust.

Public transit can be quite annoying at times. The noise of chatter, the too-hot discomfort of an overcrowded carriage at rush hour, the baby wailing in the background, the screech of wheels on tracks – until it all becomes too much and you blissfully mute the clamour by inserting a pair of earphones into your ears. Maybe you answer your phone when it rings, just to escape the background noise. Our protagonist, The Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya), lives this same universal commute and does the very same thing. Exit 8 utilises everyday sounds as aural horror in a way I have never before experienced in film. We find welcome relief, silence and solitude as we follow The Lost Man off the train and into the quiet exit corridor, where he loses phone signal during a difficult and life-altering phone call. The relief lasts until we realise that we cannot exit easily. The use of noise was made horrific in such an impactful way, that I found myself reaching for the volume button on the remote I didn’t have. A cacophony of harsh, grating noises really intensified the uneasiness of the film.

Exit 8 is a film adaptation of the popular video game of the same name. You can complete the game quickly, or it can go on for a while. The duration of your journey to the exit depends entirely on how astute you are (and how well you can sit with feelings of uncertain anticipation and unease). The premise of both the film and game is the same: in order to depart the underground subway station, we must leave through Exit 8. To reach Exit 8, we must traverse a number of corridors that visually replicate each other, right down to the advertisements on the walls. We begin at Exit 0. What should be a straight-forward journey to Exit 8 is disrupted constantly by the rule: if you notice an anomaly, you must turn back. If you fail to notice an anomaly or fail to turn back, you find yourself back at Exit 0, and must repeat the process again, not knowing what to expect this time around.

This same intense, psychological second-guessing and maniacal determination to find intentional anomalies culminates in a film that leaves the viewer as invested as our protagonist, fearing what’s to come next, and doubtful that we will ever get out. The psychological tension throughout this film is intense.

I found myself so drawn to The Lost Man, despite his lack of dialogue. Ninomaya delivered an acting masterclass in this one. I empathised with him, grew frustrated with him, rooted for him, hoped for him, and walked with him. And walked with him some more. I walked with him for an hour and a half, actually. Not only do we walk with The Lost Man physically, but we also walk with him as he laments the possible outcomes of that life-altering phone call. At the beginning of this walk, I’m as undecided as he is, but find myself hoping that by the time we make it out of the exit, we’ll have figured it out. What a concept, to lament your next step. I didn’t sign up for a philosophical exercise, yet here I was, with The Lost Man, doing just that and enjoying it too.

I found myself hoping for fright on each corridor, though it wasn’t to be. Ultimately, the few slices of visual horror in this film when done, are done so well. At the same time, though, I can appreciate that director Kawamura did not rely on visual horror alone to create the uneasiness. He could have taken the easy route, but he didn’t. To satisfy horror fans, there were some much appreciated, but subtle, visual parallels between Exit 8 and Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). We turn a corner to find a lost little boy at the end of the corridor. He has ‘the shine’, to borrow from Kubrick; he has been through this before, and has to fight his corner to convince us of anomalies. Sometimes you just have to trust the kid. Around another corner we find a flood gushing toward us at a speed we can’t run from. Sometimes we find solace in our favourite tropes, particularly when we don’t expect them.

The concept of making one’s way down never-ending hallways really robs both our protagonist and the audience of any sense of autonomy. We are at the mercy of the rules. We cannot control what is to come, or why. The path to Exit 8 is a purgatory of sorts – a passage through to the next place that propels us towards some sort of reckoning that we haven’t anticipated or signed up for. No autonomy, no control, no idea how it’s going to end – or if we can even escape. Isn’t that what good horror does?

Exit 8 is slated for Irish general release on 24 April 2026.

Caileigh Ryan is a writer and critic living in Galway. Her fiction has appeared in Tír na nÓg literary magazine, and she appeared as a guest on the poetry podcast, Sharpen Your Tongue.

caileighryan.com

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CAILEIGH RYAN REVIEWS THE IRISH PREMIERE OF ANNIVERSARY AT THE DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026.

The Irish premiere of Anniversary (2025) took place at the Dublin International Film Festival on a rainy Saturday morning at 10:30am. That’s too early for popcorn, and I hadn’t eaten breakfast, but this film certainly left me with plenty of food for thought. Writer and Director, Jan Komasa, speaking to the audience before the screening, said that he wrote this script in 2018 as a work of dystopian political fiction. “It was a dystopian film seven years ago!” he tells us, though it’s not a far cry from the political state of the world currently. The idea came, he says, when he was looking through annual family photographs, and how they changed over the years – different people sitting together year on year, a reflection of how we change over time.

Filmed in Dublin but set in Washington, DC, production was halted for a time by the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union strikes in 2023, however this gap in production plays in nicely to the transition of time over the five-year period in which the film takes place. Anniversary takes us inside the family life of the Taylors and follows the series of events that unfold after the 25th wedding anniversary party of parents Ellen (Diane Lane) and Paul (Kyle Chandler). Ellen, a liberal, politics professor, is stopped in her tracks when her writer son Josh (Dylan O’Brien) brings his new girlfriend to meet the family.

To Ellen’s horror, Josh’s new girlfriend, Liz Nettles, is an ex-student of Ellen’s, who wreaked havoc on Ellen’s professional career and expressed concerning far-right ideologies in a paper she wrote for the class, which Ellen found “disgusting.” As Ellen encourages Josh to seek publication for his ‘sci-fi trilogy’, he sends her reeling with a revelation. He has parked that dream. Liz is the dominant author in this relationship. Her debut novel is to be published soon, and when it is, The Change: The New Social Contract sells millions of copies, offering an alternative and right-wing way of living that takes the US by storm, so much so that the adapted American flag that adorns its cover starts popping up outside homes around the neighbourhood.

As the years progress, the Taylors’ lives descend into chaos – nobody sees eye-to-eye with Liz politically, despite her efforts to be liked and accepted into their clan. It is hard to believe that this lady, so pleasant, timid and elegant in appearance, is the driving force behind a “Frankenstein creation” that becomes an unprecedented best-seller and changes the country’s political climate with feverish intensity. What follows are various tensions that must be navigated, and we worry that the once close-knit family who respected each other’s diversity and respective careers, will be unable to overcome the new world they find themselves living in.

Anniversary addresses head-on the tragedy that unfolds when people are left without a choice, how difficult it is – impossible, almost – to really be a change-maker despite how passionately you feel about a cause. At its core, this film is about the all-too-familiar tragedy of what a country, the world, a life, can become when people are left without autonomy or choice, where it becomes entirely impossible to be both a change-maker, and to survive to see the outcome.

This ensemble really does a fantastic job of portraying a family that is real and complex and loves one another. These characters are normal people with their own individual, normal lives, who are challenged with navigating a new horizon. They cope by smoking weed down by the lake, making political jokes, and Ellen has a glass of wine permanently fixed in her hand during many scenes. Despite the heaviness of this story, there’s a welcome dose of comedic relief. A submissive husband in a prominent and confident family, Paul delivers some fantastic lines and had the audience laughing out loud. McKenna Grace is brilliant as Birdy, an optimistic and intelligent teen who sees the good in everyone. We could all do with a girl like her in our lives – an unapologetic beacon of hope for the future, a harbour of teenage optimism who believes the world can be good again.

Daryl McCormack delivers an extremely convincing performance as Rob Thompson, husband of second-oldest daughter, Cynthia, played by Zoey Deutch. Dylan O’Brien couldn’t have given us Josh any better. His character transition is frightening and believable – the Josh we encounter in the final half-hour is a far cry from the failed sci-fi author we met at the beginning. The male characters are constantly undermining, invalidating, and hindering the female ones. Each woman’s male counterpart is oblivious to the severity of this new way of living, until it becomes too late. Many moments reminded me of Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize-winning dystopian novel, Prophet Song (Oneworld, 2023). When you truly think about it, how would you react if your life was upturned against your will?

The production standard of this film is outstanding, and you’d never guess it was filmed in Dublin unless you were familiar with some of the background settings. Even the grey skies, impossible to avoid in Ireland, played in visually to the tone of the film. It was also a real pleasure to listen to Komasa deliver a Q&A at the end of the screening, in which he offered further insight that only enhanced my appreciation of the film. He alluded to Liz and her ilk as a virus. They add and add and add to their toxic ideologies until their surroundings are at their mercy.

Watch the film in the morning if you can. It really woke me up that day.

Anniversary is now streaming on Netflix.

Caileigh Ryan is a writer and critic living in Galway. Her fiction has appeared in Tír na nÓg literary magazine, and she appeared as a guest on the poetry podcast, Sharpen Your Tongue.

caileighryan.com

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THOMAS POOL REPORTS ON THE OPENING NIGHT GALA OF THE DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL AND REVIEWS THE WORLD PREMIERE OF ‘ONCE UPON A TIME IN A CINEMA’.

As the bus lumbered up Dublin’s O’Connell Street, past the Carlton, on a rainy evening in February, an elderly woman sitting next to me turned to me and said, with great sadness, “That used to be a cinema. It was like a cathedral. Now look at it.” Today’s Carlton, a dog-eared casino, is no cathedral. O’Connell Street Upper is blighted, semi-derelict, and, quite literally, lifeless. According to some commentators, only one person still lives on O’Connell Street. What happens to a community that loses its third spaces – the places where people can gather outside of work or the home – is despairingly evident when one looks out the bus window at the Carlton casino.

On the evening of 19 February, however, the Light House Cinema, on Smithfield’s cobblestoned square, certainly felt like hallowed ground. Each year, the Dublin International Film Festival transforms the Light House into a site of pilgrimage for Ireland’s cinephiles. The festival opened with a gala and the world premiere of Limerick filmmaker David Gleeson’s Once Upon a Time in a Cinema.

The gala did not lack for glamour, but piously abstained from the cardinal sin of Dublin fashion: glitz. Lent had just started, after all. There were no flashy Met Gala-esque gowns on this red carpet, and most attendees embraced the effortless-chic aesthetic of the ‘Dublin Creative’. With Peroni and wine flowing freely, the buzzy crowd soon took their seats.

In less capable hands, Once Upon a Time in a Cinema could have been as sentimental and maudlin as its title would lead you to believe. However, under Gleeson’s direction, audiences were given a punchy, tight, classic-with-a-twist tale with a political undercurrent that nips like a static shock when you leave the theatre.

The son of a cinema owner in Limerick, Gleeson drew a lot from his own childhood experience in making this film, he told the crowd ahead of the screening. Cinema attendance peaked in Ireland in 1946, and to him, the current post-Covid anxieties of cinema proprietors are nothing new – first there were movies on the TV, then home video, then DVDs, then Netflix and the streaming wars, and on and on it goes. But, the cinema endures. Why?

The film opens in 1980s Limerick with Earl Clancy, played by Colin Morgan, discussing the impending sale of his cinema with his brother, Gerald, played by Calam Lynch. When Earl says he’ll miss the theatre like a hole in his head, we don’t believe him; and it’s clear that he doesn’t quite believe himself either. Earl and Gerald fill the classic roles of elder and younger brother. Earl, the eldest, is set in his ways, wears out-of-fashion wool suits, and is seemingly obsessed with Yazoo’s hit song, Only You. Gerald is forward thinking, has stylishly repurposed his father’s old jacket, and is ready for something new.

They plan to sell the cinema to a former associate of their late father, a shady politician and crooked businessman named Harry Conway, who is in town from Dublin that night, and is eager to close the sale. To prove that the cinema is in fine working order, and ready to be seamlessly handed over, the brothers Clancy invite Conway to the 8pm showing of Breathless (1983), starring Richard Gere. But with a break-in the night before, and nearly £100 missing from the register, the boys are on edge and eager to make sure the night goes off without a hitch. When Earl pops into the projection booth, to make sure the film is ready, he sees that Jack, the projectionist, is drunk on the job. The comedy of errors snowballs from there.

Earl spends the night in a sprint. Between pampering the greasy Conway, fending off a plumber he’s stiffed on his bill, chasing down rats, sleuthing for the thief, kicking out rowdy teens, confiscating weed, ignoring fines from the fire marshal, a leak, a convict out for revenge, and enduring the rolling blackouts of 1980s Ireland, all while trying to instil some fatherly wisdom and bond with his teenage daughter, Early Clancy is a portrait of a man on the ropes. But through it all, he is clearly at home. He can command an errant lightbulb with a look, can perfectly time the changing of the film reels, and walks through the town like he’s the mayor; everyone on the street knows his name and he knows theirs. He is as much a fixture of the community as his theatre is.

Despite it clearly being more home to him than his actual home, a point of contention between him and his daughter, Earl is still intent on selling the place. The brothers, while saddled with the theatre by their abusive late father, do in fact possess a keen sense for business. With a new bypass being constructed, they plan on opening a 24-hour petrol station, and watch with their feet up while the stress-free cash rolls in. Conway, however, is far shrewder than the brothers and has no intention of running a falling-down cinema.

Earl’s breaking point finally comes after a trio of revelations about Conway, his brother, and his daughter. Embittered by a sense of familial betrayal, the cinema truly does begin to feel like an anchor around Earl’s neck, and we believe him, at last, when he says he’s going to sell. Besieged, he takes shelter in the projectionist’s booth, and looking for relief, enjoys the joint he confiscated earlier. Sometimes all you need is drugs, recession-induced infrastructure failure, a brick through your window, and a crowd holding their lighters aloft in the darkness, serenading you with your favourite song, to make you realise what’s important in life. With community bonds reforged, and brother and daughter back at his side, Earl Clancy chooses the local road, not a bypass.

Stepping out onto Smithfield Square, the politics of the film only zap you then, when you look left towards The Cobblestone pub. While set in the 1980s, the film is a scathing indictment of contemporary Irish urban policy. In the cold night air, you realise that the Conways of Ireland, not the Clancys, are winning. With great rapaciousness, they have swallowed up our third spaces – our pubs, our restaurants, our nightclubs, our artist spaces, our cafés, and yes, even our cinemas. Where will we congregate when the last of our cultural cathedrals have been torn down, and the streets are filled with nothing but casinos, hotels, data centres, and tourist gift shops?

“No one ever fell in love at a petrol station”, Earl Clancy says at the close of the film. All love needs is somewhere it can grow, love can bloom in the darkest of places, even in the last row of a cinema.

The Dublin International Film Festival runs from 19 February to 1 March 2026. Tickets are available at diff.ie

Once Upon a Time in a Cinema is slated for general release on 1 May.

Thomas Pool is the Content and Production Editor of The Visual Artists’ News Sheet and the Commissioning Editor of the miniVAN.

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I started working in film in 2016, though, like most who work in film, I had my favourites that drew me in long before then, like Labyrinth (1986), The Lord of the Rings (2001-3), Alien (1979). All those worlds were so filled with depth and purpose – so textured and believable, you could almost smell the air. Teams of people create worlds and make audiences contemplate, escape, and maybe even see something truer about themselves. I wanted to be part of that; I wanted to create.

I began in graphic design for advertising and newspapers for a few years. Then, I accidentally found myself working in film in Los Angeles. I was creating posters, props, fake brands, and signage that needed to look like it had existed for decades – all the things developed for a film to make the world believable. I won’t lie: it was technical, fast, and sometimes soulless. Then I discovered scenic art. Hand-painting effects that give sets their breath of life brought me a huge sense of accomplishment. A single glaze, a fake rust patch, the texture of soot where a character would naturally brush against a wall. It all felt like storytelling through surfaces.

Over the years, I worked in almost every role across the art department. That full-circle experience shaped how I approach design, not as hierarchy but as orchestra. When I art direct or design a set, I feel like I’m composing a melody; drawing, drafting, researching, and guiding construction and scenic teams to bring an imagined world into being. There’s something poetic in the translation – a line on tracing paper becomes a wall, becomes a shadow, becomes emotion.

Working across every department also kept me humble. You quickly learn that no vision survives without the painters, plasterers, dressers, buyers, or runners. These are the people who built the worlds that raised me, and I’ve always carried the deepest respect for that collective craft. My job as an art director, as I see it, is not to impose but to conduct, to make sure every note of someone’s skill is heard, and to make other people’s lives easier.

Not every production has been glamorous. I can’t even remember them all: the long nights, the endless coffee, the weather, the horrible producers. Some sets collapse in my memory into a blur of sawdust and deadlines. But a few remain luminous.

One of my favourites was a small production produced by Keith O’Grady. It wasn’t a career maker or something that would let me retire early, but the experience itself was beautiful. When a production understands its limitations and respects its crew, you feel it in the final work. Everyone’s energy aligns; the world you’re building becomes cohesive because it was built on care.

Then there’s the one I still brag about – my pièce de résistance, as far as my younger self is concerned – a motion simulator attraction called Millennium Falcon at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland, California. I was part of a small team of scenics that brought the life-size ship and its environment to life. It was hard going, miserable at times, and physically demanding, but we were all so proud. Standing beneath the hull, hand-painting panels and weathering metal that would soon be touched by thousands of visitors every day, I felt that rare mix of exhaustion and wonder that makes this line of work addictive. You’re painting mythology on a one-to-one scale.

Film work is transient; you live in months, sometimes weeks. But the lessons stick. You learn speed, precision, diplomacy, and the ability to find beauty under fluorescent lights at 2am. You learn that every day is a school day. Between productions, I’ve always kept those muscles active through my own practice: Illustration, stained glass, interior and set design for local projects. Each discipline feeds the other. Glass teaches me light and patience, and film teaches me rhythm and problem-solving.

Scenic work, in particular, taught me to love imperfection: the crack in the plaster, the way grime settles unevenly on a wall, how mould looks in a damp room. Those ‘flaws’ are the fingerprints of life, and I chase the same feeling in my artwork now. Whether I’m painting on glass or designing a space, I think about how light will travel, how a viewer will move through the world I’m shaping.

I’m drawn to working-class materials, to Americana, to things that feel lived-in and unpretentious. Maybe that’s why set work always felt like home; there’s no separation between hand and idea. You’re literally making something solid out of thin air. Even the most fantastical world still needs screws, paint, and people who know how to build.

Art directing taught me that collaboration is its own art form. You learn to read people as much as drawings: who is silently fixing problems, who’s losing light, who needs to be heard? The best days on set aren’t when something looks perfect; they’re when everyone on the floor feels like part of a single creative heartbeat. Those feelings are unmatched.

In the years since, I’ve been folding those values into my own projects back home in Ireland, from stained glass panels that evoke feeling in the lighting, to interior spaces designed like living sets, to anti-fascist or feminist imagery that reclaims the visual language of power and spectacle. I’m fascinated by how design can make ideology visible; how a space can signal inclusion or resistance, simply through materials and light. How design is used to translate the world around us.

Right now, I’m developing a series of glass works inspired by medieval symbolism and contemporary politics, exploring the meaning of the word ‘illumination’. I want to merge the devotional aura of stained glass with the immediacy of film; light as message, surface as world-building.

Looking ahead, I’m interested in how art direction can evolve outside of film – including how we can protect it from the inevitable impacts of AI – into community installations, markets, and public art that carry the same cinematic logic of world-making. After years of building other people’s stories, I’m now building my own, smaller perhaps, but with the same belief that spaces can make people feel something real.

At its heart, art direction is about care, for the story, surfaces, and the people who build the illusion with you. Whether it’s a galaxy far away or a corner shop in Belfast, the goal is the same: make it feel true.

Aíne Lynn-McEvoy is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose work reflects contemporary culture through bold illustration, glass, and scenic art grounded in material process and place.

ainelynnmcevoy.com

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