Carmel Winters
Ireland, 2018
101’
Tickets 
Original English version
From the producers of ONCE and SING STREET, FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY is a powerful and timely story of a girl’s fight for freedom and belonging. In a gender-reversal of the classic film Billy Elliot, 15-year-old Frances has to fight for the right to fight back. Raised in roadside camps in rural Ireland, Frances wants to champion her people inside the boxing ring and out, like her idol Muhammad Ali. But society is determined to break her spirit and destroy her way of life. And her father, once her greatest ally, is too defeated himself to imagine any better for his daughter. But Frances was not born to be broken. In the mother of all fights, she must dig deep to find in herself the Champion her father once knew her to be.
Carmel Winters is an award-winning writer and director for screen and stage. Her debut feature film SNAP won her ‘Best Irish Feature’ and ‘Best Director’ at the Dublin Critics’ Circle Awards and the audience vote for Best Film at Montevideo International Film Festival. In 2011, she was also awarded the ‘Irish Times Irish Theatre Best New Play’ award for the Abbey, Ireland’s National Theatre’s production of her play B FOR BABY. Carmel has since participated in the Guiding Lights scheme for filmmakers, mentored by John Madden, and premiered four new plays, BEST MAN, WITNESS, SALT MOUNTAIN and THE REMAINS OF MAISIE DUGGAN. She is currently working on her third feature film, an original TV drama series and a stage musical.
Director: Carmel Winters
Script: Carmel Winters
Cinematography: Michael Lavelle
Sound: Fiachra O’Hanlon
Editing: Julian Ulrichs
Music: Stephen Warbeck
Cast: Hazel Doupe, Dara Devaney, Johnny Collins, Hilda Fay, Lalor Roddy, Noelle O’Regan, Packy Lee, Michael Collins, Aidan O’Hare, Aaron Monaghan, Jamie Kierans, Pascal Scott
Production: Martina Niland, David Collins, Cathleen Dore, Lesley McKimm
FRIDAY, 20:30, followed by a Q&A with one of the protagonists