From documentaries to narrative gems, Khushi Jain shares her top picks from New Irish Shorts, presented on Sunday, 3rd August 2025, at GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival at the Lighthouse.
Four documentaries, one music video and four narrative films made up the New Irish Shorts line-up. This was not only the second screening, with the programme having premiered on the Friday, but was also an access screening with two Irish Sign Language interpreters and closed captions. On entry, volunteers sat at tables with masks, sanitiser and fidget toys. The theatre was relaxed, the lights were dim and movement was encouraged. I was even able to freely take my phone out and write some notes.
The programme began in the past with lessons in political history with Conor Toner’s Everything Looks Simple From A Distance and Lewis Doherty’s Outlasting, then waded through a nonfictional present with Sarah Griffin’s Moved, Nicola Leddy’s BOOBS, and David O Carroll’s Anziety. The shorts took a musical detour with Dara McManus’ Mercy, before ending in tender emotions and ultimately laughter thanks to Caleb J. Roberts’ Purebred, Sam Ahern’s NIGHT GLANCES, and Luke Faulkner’s Fr. Brennan is Having a Breakdown!).
These were the highlights:
Conor Toner’s Everything Looks Simple From A Distance
Shot in monochrome, Toner’s film indeed looks very simple from a distance. Noah (Cailum Carragher) has the most wonderful idea of sending an Irish mission to the moon. He gives presentations to politicians, priests and physicists with a papier-mâché moon and a tiny rocket ship, only to hear definite ‘no’s. The film is funny and whimsical until the last minute, when we see Noah and his partner Niall holding hands and reality hits like a slap. It’s the 1960s, and all Noah wants is for the moon mission to put an end to the escalating violence in Northern Ireland. The switch from comedy to tragedy is brilliantly handled by Toner, and there is a remarkable simplicity to the cinematography and production design of this period piece.
Nicola Leddy’s BOOBS
BOOBS follows artist Geraldine Carton on her mission to paint one hundred boobs belonging to women of all shapes and sizes, young and old, queer and straight, enabled and disabled. In her paintings, Carton redefines the patriarchal artist-muse relationship by stripping down to be as exposed as her subjects. In her film, Leddy does something similar by continuously engaging with and contextualising her subjects. BOOBS is significant because it shows two artists looking at some of the most vulnerable bodies with gazes that don’t penetrate but only celebrate.
David O Carroll’s Anziety
Anziety is also about two artists, director O Carroll and Ian, the eponymous drag queen Anziety. Ian pulls out some old photographs and tells O Carroll his story: his childhood, living in a foster home with his brother, how his grandmother became a mother to him, and how he became Anziety. Jack Cantrell’s cinematography turns this documentary into a dancer, like its protagonist, prancing from a fashion editorial shoot to an earnest conversation in the intimacy of the bedroom to a hazy drag show drenched in red lights.
Luke Faulkner’s Fr. Brennan is Having a Breakdown!
Father Brennan has been behaving strangely, but for how long will a 1990s rural parish tolerate him? A very, very sensible member of the community, Richard Hennessey, comes to talk to him. Father Brennan (played by Denny Redmond, who is also the writer) is provocative, pathetic and fun, a character bursting at the seams, and his id is the life of this party. Luke Faulkner’s film is full of sexy Jesuses, even sexier John the Baptists, ugly-but-in-an-attractive-way living room wallpaper and Marlene Dietrich. It is deeply camp in all the best ways.
A highly special mention goes to Caleb J Roberts’ Purebred, a sweaty and sensitive film about a young trans man, a pregnancy test, bathrooms, edited to ‘Motorcycle Boy’ by Fontaines D.C.
GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival took place from Thursday, 31st July to Monday, 4th August 2025.
