Documentary The Bookseller of Belfast has continued its festival success with 3 awards in the last fortnight. It took Best Film and the Audience Award at the Florence International Film Festival, Italy’s leading documentary festival. It also picked up the Audience Award at Les Escales Documentaires, La Rochelle. In the past months it has screened across the world in over fifteen festivals from Montreal to New Caledonia and can be seen a the Foyle Film Festival later this month.
The film is a poetic and humorous portrait of ex-bookseller, John Clancy and the different lives he crosses as he makes his way through the pages of his vast stock of unsold books and across the streets of Belfast. Awarding the prize in Florence the jury had this to say about the film:
“It’s rare to find a film that has so much tenderness, humour and ability to surprise. What a joy to walk into the magic world of its characters. And then Giacomo Puccini, Bambi, Whitney Houston, the Tsunami, The Ancient Rome, Detroit and an oversize mattress. Life and everything in it”.
The film is a Dumbworld Production, directed by Alessandra Celesia and produced by John McIlduff . It was funded by Northern Ireland Screen through the Landmark Documentary Scheme.