Wild Atlantic Way Film Festival
The Irish Embassy in Riga took the initiative to launch the inaugural Wild Atlantic Way Film Festival to promote the WAW's runaway success as a tourist attraction and to promote Irish Film with support from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Irish Film Institute. Both Irish feature length and short movies were included.
Minister Joe McHugh welcomed the inclusion of "How Was Your Day" based on a short story by Nollaig Rowan which had won the "Best Irish Short" at the Foyle Film Festival in 2015 and the Best Narrative Short in SXSW festival, Austin, Texas.
The inaugural WAW Film Festival was held in Riga from 8 to 9 December 2016 at the cinema "Splendid Palace". It was the culmination of the first ever Irish week Īru dienas (Irish days) which featured a number of events across the city. The programme saw an extensive range of promotions of Irish food and drink, film, dance and music. The response was so successful that the Embassy doubled their Facebook likes and greatly enhanced their Twitter following.
The Wild Atlantic Way Film Festival programme opened both evenings with the Rugby World Cup 2023 promotional video. The programme was balanced to include Irish and Latvian shorts with Irish feature films and short promotional material provided by Tourism Ireland. The opening night attracted wide publicity, and all tickets for the 206 capacity seat cinema venue were taken up on the Event Brite platform. The Festival was attended by the Minister for Education Karlis Shadurkis. It also included the Pro-Rector of the Latvian National Academy of Culture, the highly regarded Peteris Krilovs who is the driving force in developing Latvian short films.
Ambassador Hennessy selected the Irish short "How was your day" based on the story by Nollaig Rowan for the opening night, it made a big impression on the audience, The following evening featured Run and Jump.
It is important to acknowledge the excellent contribution of Soracha Pelan O'Treasaigh in making the WAW Festival possible and in highlighting Irish Short movies and also in providing the "After '16' commemorative short films as part of the 1916 - 2016 Centenary Commemorations.
NOLLAIG ROWAN is a writer and child psychologist based in Dublin. She is regularly broadcast on RTE radio and her poetry and stories have been published internationally. Her story, "You" was selected in RTE's Francis MacManus radio short story competition and later adapted by director Damien O'Donnell for his short film "How Was Your Day", 2015, funded by the Irish Film Board. During 2015/16, it has been screened at 19 film festivals around the world. Nollaig's writing often challenges our preconceptions of children with disabilities.
