The 19th Galway Film Fleadh will open July 10 with Cristiano Bortone's feature Red Like the Sky, inspired by the true story of Italian sound editor Mirco Mencacci. Bortone will attend for a Q&A session following the screening.

The Fleadh will close July 15 with David Von Ancken's western Seraphim Falls starring Irish actors Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan.

Bortone is one of 15 international feature and documentary directors who will accompany their films to the Fleadh. Chinese-born Xiaolu Guo brings How Is Your Fish Today'; from the UK Ashley Horner brings The Other Possibility, and Anand Tucker brings And When Did You Last See Your Father; from Spain Ventura Pons brings Life on the Edge (La Vida Abismal); and Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf brings his film set in India, Scream of the Ants.

International directors bringing feature documentaries to Galway include Amir Bar-Lev (My Kid Could Paint That), Julien Temple (Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten), Caveh Zahedi (I Am A Sex Addict), Debbie Melnyk, Rick Caine (Manufacturing Dissent), and a producer of Tribeca and Britdoc winner, The War Tapes, will be on hand for a post-screening discussion.

There is a full complement of new Irish features at this year's Fleadh, a combination of films backed by traditional funding sources, such as the Irish Film Board, and several others included in a distinct Wild Cards programme which were made on low budgets using, as the programme puts it, 'ingenuity, creativity and passion.'

The New Irish Cinema strand includes Tom Collins's bilingual Kings, Robert Quinn's Irish-language Graveyard Clay (Cre na Cille), Lenny Abrahamson's Cannes Director's Fortnight hit Garage, Nicolas Roeg's Puffball, Brendan Grant's Tonight is Cancelled, Ross Whitaker and Liam Nolan's Saviours, Brian Launders's Bitterness, and Marian Quinn's Irish/German co-production 32a.

The Wild Cards programme, which will run in the cinemobile over twelve hours on July 12, includes five feature dramas and two feature documentaries. This could be a talent-spotting journey for viewers with stamina but the Fleadh maintains that while 'some may not have the sheen that more fully resourced films have, within this selection of films are flashes of brilliance and of uncompromising vision.'

There is a retrospective programme of Polish films and Fleadh guests Volker Schlondorff, Jeremy Irons, Terry George and Fionnula Flanagan, will be present for screenings of some of their more notable films. Industry events, seminars and sidebars, and the annual Fleadh Fair for pitching projects, all take place from July 12-14.

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