Irish Film in Silver Spring
By • February 19, 2026 0 356
Repeat after me: Útóipe Cheilteach.
Pronounced (more or less) “oo-toe-ih-peh khel-chukh,” the phrase means “Celtic Utopia,” the English title of a documentary about the antiestablishment bands — with names like the Mary Wallopers, Poor Creature and Rising Damp — that are recasting Irish folk music.
One of 18 features in the 20th edition of Solas Nua’s Capital Irish Film Festival, “Celtic Utopia” will have its East Coast premiere on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 9:30 p.m. The festival moves into the AFI Silver Theatre on Thursday, Feb. 26, winding down around the corner at McGinty’s Public House on Sunday, March 1.
“Báite,” which won the Best Irish Feature Film award at the Galway Film Fleadh.
Fans of traditional Irish music have another reason to spend that Saturday in Silver Spring: the 12:05 p.m. screening of “In Time: Dónal Lunny,” about the bouzouki-playing legend (Lunny turns 79 on March 10).
A founding member of innovative trad bands in the 1970s, in later groups Lunny brought rock, jazz and world music to the party. As a producer, he worked with Sinéad O’Connor (with whom he had a son), Kate Bush and Elvis Costello, among others. P.J. Mathews of University College Dublin will moderate a Q&A with director Nuala O’Connor after the screening, the North American premiere.
That evening’s screening of “Celtic Utopia” will also be followed by a Q&A, with Dennis Harvey, who co-directed the film with Lars Lovén. Capital Irish Film Festival Director Maedhbh Mc Cullagh will moderate.
Mc Cullagh, a producer and programmer who joined D.C.-based Irish arts organization Solas Nua (“new light”) in 2022, explained how she curates the festival.
The Capital Irish Film Festival’s closing-night film, “Christy.”
“Each year, I watch hundreds of films and aim for a balance between features and shorts, documentaries, narrative and dramatic films, as well as animation and art films. I watch films year-round and follow all the news releases for what is in production, in postproduction or coming to a festival. The festival also accepts submissions via FilmFreeway, the online film submissions platform, and many of the short films programmed in the festival are submitted to us.”
Seven of this year’s features will have their North American premieres and seven others, including the opening-night film, “Saipan,” their East Coast premieres. The “Saipan” screening, on Thursday at 7 p.m., will be followed by a Q&A with directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn — moderated by Darragh Gannon of Georgetown University’s Global Irish Studies program — and an Embassy of Ireland-sponsored reception.
Why Saipan? The island, capital of the Northern Marianas (a U.S. commonwealth, like Puerto Rico), was the scene of a titanic clash between soccer star Roy Keane — then-captain of the Irish national football team — and manager Mick MacCarthy, days before the squad competed in the 2002 World Cup. The Guardian called Éanna Hardwicke, who plays Keane, “an electric presence, a real star find of the festival” (the Toronto International Film Festival, where “Saipan” premiered last fall).
Later that night, at 9:30 p.m., a third music-themed documentary will have its North American premiere: “BP Fallon Rock’n’Roll Wizard Vol. 1,” directed by Alan Leonard. Now 79, Bernard Patrick Fallon’s career as a rock promoter included stints with Apple Records, Thin Lizzy, T. Rex and Led Zeppelin. After working in Irish radio in the 1980s, he DJ-ed in the ’90s with U2 and in the ’00s with My Bloody Valentine and the Kills, later recording a collaboration with Jack White and launching his own band, BP Fallon & The Bandits.
Friday offers four documentaries in a row: at 10:30 a.m., Méabh O’Hare’s “Travelling Back (Ag Taisteal Siar),” which delves into the musical heritage of Ireland’s Traveller community; at 12:10 p.m., Garry Keane’s “A Quiet Love,” in which three Deaf couples share their stories in Irish Sign Language; at 2:15 p.m., Myrid Carten’s “A Want in Her,” about the filmmaker’s search for her missing mother; and at 4:10 p.m., Aoife Kelleher’s “Testimony,” on the fight for justice by survivors of the Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes.
The festival’s Northern Ireland Spotlight, on Friday at 6:30 p.m., is a double bill of Oliver McGoldrick’s “Three Keenings,” winner of the 2026 Norman Houston Short Film Award, in which a struggling actor becomes a professional mourner, and Colin McIvor’s just-released “No Ordinary Heist,” based on the 2004 Northern Bank robbery in Belfast. Irish Stew Podcast hosts Martin Nutty and John Lee (the podcast is in residence at the festival) will moderate a post-screening Q&A with McIvor and producer Ruth Carter, followed by a reception sponsored by the Northern Ireland Bureau, North America.
“BP Fallon Rock’n’Roll Wizard Vol. 1” will have its North American premiere at this year’s Capital Irish Film Festival.
In addition to “Three Keenings,” the festival will present four programs of short films — selected by a “shorts committee,” per Mc Cullagh — one each on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m., plus a family-friendly program on Saturday at 11 a.m.
Sharing Saturday’s lineup with the two shorts programs, “In Time: Dónal Lunny” and “Celtic Utopia” are: Trisha Ziff’s documentary “Gerry Adams: A Ballymurphy Man” at 2:30 p.m.; Ruán Magan’s “Báite” (Google it), a drama set at a rural pub; and Adam O’Keeffe’s “Horseshoe,” a comedy-drama about four estranged siblings.
Solas Nua board chair emeritus Patrick Meskell will moderate a Q&A with the director, the writer and two of the actors after the screening of “Báite,” which won the 2025 Best Irish Feature Film award at the Galway Film Fleadh.
Fleadh, as you may have guessed, is Irish (that is, Irish Gaelic) for festival. The dates for the next Galway Film Fleadh are July 7 to 12.
“It’s a melting pot of local, national and international participants and there is such a love and passion for film amongst Galwegians,” said Mc Cullagh, who attends every year. “There’s a buzz about the city during the Fleadh and this only intensifies after the Fleadh ends and the other iconic festival, the annual Galway Arts Festival, begins, with a program of live music, theater, mind-bending art installations and dazzling street performances.”
On Sunday, four documentaries and a heist-gone-wrong feature precede the festival closer: at 11:50 a.m., Maurice O’Brien’s “Listen to the Land Speak,” which spends four seasons with the late author, broadcaster, documentary maker and environmental activist Manchán Magan, introduced by his brother Ruán; at 1:45 p.m., Ruán Magan’s “Daniel O’Connell: The Emancipator,” followed by a panel discussion with the University of Notre Dame’s Chanté Mouton Kinyon, University College Cork’s Jay Roszman and the director, moderated by author Christopher Morash; at 3:40 p.m., Gar O’Rourke’s “Sanatorium,” about Odesa’s Kuyalnyk Sanatorium, with a post-screening Q&A with the director, moderated by DC/DOX co-founder Sky Sitney of Georgetown University; and at 6 p.m., Damian McCann’s “Aontas,” which works backward from an Irish Credit Union robbery.
The festival ends with an 8 p.m. gala screening of the Best Irish Film at the Galway Film Fleadh, Brandan Canty’s “Christy,” about a 17-year-old kicked out of his latest foster home in suburban Cork, and the closing reception for all ticket holders at McGinty’s, 911 Ellsworth Drive. Ticket holders can also take advantage of a discount at McGinty’s from Wednesday, Feb. 27, through Monday, March 2.
General admission to Capital Irish Film Festival screenings is $15. All-access passes are sold out.
Capital Irish Film Festival
Feb. 26 to March 1
AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center
8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, Maryland
