This film is based on the book, Stella Days: The Life and Times of a Rural Irish Cinema, written by Michael Doorley, which concerns the true story of how a small cinema came to be in the town of Borrisokane in County Tipperary.
Daniel Barry (Martin Sheen), parish priest of Borrisokane, feels like the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He has nothing in common with his parishioners and secretly feels he has lost his vocation. When forced by his Bishop to start a fund-raising campaign, he attempts to reconcile his passion for film with his duty through the creation of the Stella Cinema. But he faces plenty of opposition: from the Bishop and a number of influential parishioners, who see films a source of moral corruption; from locals; and ultimately from his own crisis of conscience.
The story of the conflict between love and duty, hope and faith, Stella Days 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.
Admission costs $5.
