Two filmmakers behind the Oscar-nominated feature An Cailín Ciúin have been conferred with honorary degrees by University College Dublin (UCD), in recognition of their achievements “in the field of Irish language filmmaking”.
Colm Baireád and Cleona Ní Chrualaoí, the director and producer of An Cailín Ciúin respectively, were conferred with honorary Doctor of Arts degrees at a ceremony in O’Reilly Hall at the Belfield campus on Thursday.
Mr Baireád and Ms Ní Chrualaoí, who are married, worked together on the 2022 film, which received widespread critical acclaim, and was the first ever Irish film to be nominated for an Academy Award in the Best International Feature Film category. The film won multiple other awards, including seven gongs at the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards.
In a speech delivered at the ceremony, Dr Aoife Whelan of UCD’s School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore said that the pair’s work on the film “has firmly cemented Irish language filmmaking within the upper echelons of international cinematic production”.
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Their decision to adapt Claire Keegan’s novella Foster for screen in Irish was a “bold choice”, reflecting “the power of film as a universal medium that can transcend spatial, linguistic and cultural boundaries, in this case reaching an international audience, many of whom may not previously have been aware of the existence of a distinct Irish language film and arts sector”.
Dr Whelan noted the couple’s extensive experience in working in Irish, including producing several programmes for TG4.
“Their combined success reflects the evolution of the Irish language at home and abroad over the past quarter century, from the establishment of our Irish language television channel, TG4, in 1996, to the recognition of Irish as an official language of the EU in 2007,” Dr Whelan said.
She said she hoped the filmmakers’ success would inspire UCD graduates “to be bold, to be the disrupters, to embrace new opportunities and to not let anything hold you back”.
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