Once Upon a Time in a Cinema

On a Friday evening in the 1980s, things go haywire at a small Irish village cinema. As the sold-out thriller Breathless (1983) plays in real-time on the big screen, we follow cinema owner Earl Clancy (Colin Morgan, seen in the BBC series Merlin and Kenneth Branagh's Belfast) through the most hectic night of his life. equipment fails, the audience grows restless, and financial worries loom over him. With director David Gleeson, who grew up in his father’s cinema, Once Upon a Time in a Cinema transforms a nostalgic experience into an engaging, comic drama. What begins as a chaotic race against the clock, evolves into a heartwarming hommage to the silver screen - one that, through a cathartic finale, demonstrates that a shared cinema experience has the wonderful power to unite.

Once Upon a Time in a Cinema opened the Dublin International Film Festival earlier this year. Remarkably, even before its general release in Irish cinemas, a special screening took place at the Royal Theatre in Limerick, where the film was shot. The screening at the Noordelijk Film Festival marks the Dutch premiere.