As part of the Galway Film Centre and Galway Film Festival film award initiative, Ronan Gallagher's 'Guest of The Nation' which was conceived, cast, crewed, shot, edited and produced over the five days of the Festival, was screened on closing night in the Town Hall @ 7pm Sunday 14th along with Coisceim's 'Hit and Run'.
Made on a budget of 100 euro, the film is an excellent example of the immediacy of working with digital film and shows what can be done with a limited budget and an unlimited imagination. As Gallagher himself puts it, 'Everything I needed to make this film, including most of the crew could fit into the back of my Peugeot 205'
It stars Nigerian actor and writer Eugene Ebhonuaye a Christian who fled sectarianism and racism in his own country to end up in Ballinamore in Ireland with his Ukrainian wife Irene who is a Muslim.
The film highlights the plight of many asylum seekers who have been traumatised and tormented by evil forces in their own countries, many of whose regimes are encouraged and supported for financial and geo-political reasons by the very countries in the West that seek to stop such people seeking sanctuary.