Stella Days (2011)

Director Thaddeus O’ Sullivan

Daniel Barry, parish priest of Borrisokane, Co. Tipperary, feels like the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although he works hard to fulfil his duty, he has nothing in common with his parishioners and secretly fears he has lost his vocation.

When forced by his Bishop to start a big fund-raising campaign, he attempts to reconcile his passion for film with his duty to the Church through the creation of the Stella Cinema.

But he faces plenty of opposition: from the Bishop and a number of influential parishioners who see film as a source of moral corruption; from locals; and ultimately from his own crisis of conscience.

Stella Days is the story of the conflict between love and duty, hope and faith, and between the excitement of the unknown and the security of the familiar. It encapsulates the dilemma of Ireland in the mid-1950s – on the cusp of the modern but still clinging to the traditions of Church and a cultural identity forged in very different times. - Galway Film Fleadh