Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Subtitle Film Festival makes a welcome return to Galway’s Town Hall Theatre after a six-year absence.    Celebrating the best of European film, Subtitle runs from next Friday to Sunday, January, 16 to 18, with a programme of foreign-language comedies, thrillers and dramas, all of them popular and accessible.

Five Irish premieres will be screened, alongside five modern European classics, including Amélie, The Intouchables and Headhunters.

Subtitle kicks off on Friday, January 16, at 6.15pm with the Irish premiere of Don’t Call Me Mama, a Norwegian drama that was released last year.

Directed by Nina Knag and starring Pia Tjelta, Tarek Zayat, this sharp and courageous debut follows a secondary teacher married to the local mayor, whose life unravels when she falls for a young asylum seeker.

The dark comedy thriller Headhunters follows at 8.30pm, fulfilling the desire of Subtitle’s organisers to bring something with “real bite” to Galway. This 2011 breakout hit, directed by Morten Tyldum, helped put Norwegian cinema on the world stage. Adapted from Jo Nesbø’s bestselling book, it follows a ruthless headhunter and part-time art thief who is suddenly plunged into a deadly game of cat and mouse. Starring Aksel Hennie and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, this tension-filled film is also darkly funny.

Saturday’s programme starts at 11.05am with the Irish premiere of Our Girls, from the Netherlands. Released last year, it’s directed by Academy Award-winning director Mike van Diem and the cast includes Thekla Reuten and Fedja van Huêt.

The winner of Best Film and Best Screenplay at last year’s Dutch Film Awards, this suspense-filled moral thriller tracks two long-time couples whose idyllic Alpine holiday shatters after a tragic accident involving their teenage daughters. As they face impossible choices, love and morality are pushed to breaking point.

The Irish premiere of the 2025 Danish drama, Weightless, is at 1.15pm. Emilie Thalund’s debut follows 15-year-old Lea during at a summer weight-loss camp. Desperate to fit in, she fixates on the charismatic instructor, Rune, and her life begins to unravel in ways she never anticipated in this exploration of adolescent pain, desire and transformation.

Also from Denmark, and another Irish premiere, My Eternal Summer will be at 3.30pm. This 2024 film, the debut from director Sylvia Le Fanu, follows fifteen-year-old Fanny and her mother Karin during one final summer at their lakeside home.

Featuring Kaya Toft Loholt and Maria Rossing, My Eternal Summer explores love, loss and the fragile threads people leave behind. It won the NDR, the top prize at Lübeck’s Nordic Film Days Festival.

Pictured: Omar Sy and François Cluzet in 2011’s Intouchables. This French film, following an unlikely friendship, won seven César Awards, including Best Actor for Omar Sy, and was nominated for a Golden Globe and BAFTA.