Accessible Cinema at the IFI

HIGH-RISE

BEN WHEATLEY

Audio Description (AD) will be available on all screenings.

There will be Open Captioned (OC) screenings on Mar 21st (18.15) and 29th (16.00).

Moving into an imposing brutalist skyscraper on the edge of an unnamed English metropolis, suave neurologist Laing (Tom Hiddleston) becomes enraptured by neighbouring occupants, particularly the building’s supercilious architect Anthony Royal (Jeremy Irons). As poorer inhabitants, preceded by a psychotic documentarian (Luke Evans), register that amenities are unfairly distributed however, a rage develops that goes unchecked and when a vicious anarchy prevails, Laing opts merely to adapt.

A complex black comedy more interested in degeneracy than class warfare, Wheatley’s High-Rise provides an inimitable take on Ballard’s riveting novel about societal collapse. (Notes by Alice Butler.)

(OPENS MARCH 18TH)

SING STREET

JOHN CARNEY

Audio Description (AD) will be available on all screenings.

There will be Open Captioned (OC) screenings on Mar 23rd (16.10) and 30th (18.30).

With money tight in a boozy, middle-class 1980s Dublin household, youngest son Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is forced to transfer from his private school to the Brothers in Synge Street where posh new boys are easy prey for the school bullies. Working on relationship advice and musical cues from his much-admired, louche, older brother (Jack Reynor), he forms a band to attract a sophisticated older woman (Lucy Boynton) who he persuades to appear in a series of music videos.

Presenting a pitch-perfect reconstruction of Dublin teen life in the 1980s, director John Carney (Once) has scored another triumph with this hilarious, warm hearted musical tale. (Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn).

(OPENS MARCH 18TH)

HAIL, CAESAR!

ETHAN COEN, JOEL COEN

Audio Description is available for all screenings of this film.

Following a brace of films which saw the Coen Brothers adopt a more sombre perspective on life’s shortcomings, Hail, Caesar! sees them return to the brasher comedy of O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000) and Burn After Reading (2008). Something of a companion piece to Barton Fink (1991), the film is set in 1950s Hollywood, where Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) works to keep the misdeeds of Capitol Pictures and its stars out of the gossip columns. Among these are the out-of-wedlock pregnancy of an upcoming star (Scarlett Johansson) and the woeful miscasting of a Western star in an elegant parlour drama with a prestigious director (Ralph Fiennes).

When the studio’s top star (George Clooney) is kidnapped by Communists from the set of the year’s biggest production, Mannix must discreetly track him down in this screwball love-letter to Hollywood’s Golden Age. (Notes by Kevin Coyne.)

(OPENS MARCH 4TH)