Rathmullan Film Festival 2025: Lights, Camera, Gaelige!

The 2025 Rathmullan Film Festival Challenge Collection

Northern Ireland Screen has partnered with Rathmullan Film Festival since 2023. The partnership with the Digital Film Archive has two main areas: The screening of beautiful films in interesting venues and with local collaborators and the Film Challenge in which new filmmakers rummage in the archive and create their own unique takes on the stories it tells.

Established in 2017 and launched in 2018, the Rathmullan Film Festival is a volunteer-led, not-for-profit, participatory festival located in the seaside village of Rathmullan, Co. Donegal. The Festival screens popular films but is also a leading organisation in the development of film-making skills in the Donegal area. The participatory aspect of the Festival encourages people of all ages and skills to learn about the world of cinema and to be a real part of it, fostering talent and creating a legacy in the participants, many of whom have continued to make films.

This collection holds the films created locally within the Film Challenge project for 2025. 

In 2025, the challenge was to create films as Gaelige. The participants were guided by Póca Productions and our judges this year, Bairbre Uí Chathail from Líonra Leitir Ceanainn in Letterkenney, and James Jamison Mac Lochlainn from Northern Ireland Screen's Irish Language Broadcasting Fund Team who also kindly helped with script-editing.

The winning film was Líomanáid by Carol Wilson, a charming and witty story of what happens when an unexpected gift takes on a life of its own.