Kerry Film Festival


The Kerry Film Festival is an annual film festival in County Kerry, Republic of Ireland, taking place in October.
The Kerry Film Festival is funded by Kerry County Council, Fáilte Ireland, as well as having corporate sponsorship.
Kerry Film Festival was established in 2000 but remained a small regional festival throughout its first years, with a mere 1,700 attendees at the 2006 festival. Then, in 2007, the festival exploded becoming the fastest growing festival in all of Ireland, with audiences increasing by nearly 600% from 2006 to 2011 when its audience topped 10,000 for the first time.
The main feature of the festival is a short film competition. Past adjudicators of the Kerry Film Festival Short Film Competition have included Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, Michael Fassbender, Jim Cummings, Benjamin Cleary and Gabriel Byrne. The festival also screens feature films.
In 2008 Kerry Film Festival instigated the Maureen O'Hara Award for women that have excelled in film, one of the few film awards, any where in the world, offered exclusively to women and the first named award in Ireland, Brenda Fricker was the inaugural recipient. The award was presented to her by Jim Sheridan, who directed her in the Oscar-winning My Left Foot. In 2009 the award was presented to Rebecca Miller who was in Kerry to pick up the award with her husband, Daniel Day-Lewis at a ceremony with Dave Fanning as MC.
In 2010 Maureen O'Hara attended the festival and presented the award in person to Juliette Binoche Fionnula Flanagan picked up the award in 2011 while Saoirse Ronan won the award in 2012.
KFF has previously featured successful short films such as the Oscar short-listed animation Head over Heels in 2012, the 2014 Oscar winner Mr. Hublot and in 2015 the highly acclaimed Academy Award winner S t u t t e r e r by Ben Cleary.

Maureen O'Hara Award Recipients