PRESS RELEASE

27 October 2026

Silk Road International Film Festival announces programme for its 14th edition at Trinity College Dublin, and on Silk Road ON DEMAND

Luxembourg’s Oscar submission CHILD opens the 14th Silk Road International Film Festival on 9 November, as a delegation from the Shanghai International Film & TV Festivals Center visits Dublin and Shanghai Golden Goblet winner The Blind Girl and an Elephant streams across Ireland

Dublin, 27 October 2026. The Silk Road International Film Festival (SRIFF) returns for its 14th edition from 9 to 15 November 2026. Screenings take place in person at Trinity College Dublin from Monday to Saturday, with an online programme available across Ireland all week on the festival’s own platform, Silk Road ON DEMAND.

Selected from more than 200 submissions under the theme “The Silk Road and beyond”, the programme brings together films from Luxembourg, Türkiye, Poland, Japan, China, Mexico, Bangladesh, Estonia, Ireland and further afield. All features screening at Trinity are Irish premieres.

The festival opens on Monday 9 November with CHILD, directed by Cyrus Neshvad, Luxembourg’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards.

The week continues with About My Mom (dir. Soner Sert, Türkiye) on Tuesday 10 November, the story of a man who returns from Germany for the fifth anniversary of his mother’s death and sets out across rural Türkiye with the father he blames for it. On Thursday 12 November, Glorious Summer (dir. Helena Ganjalyan and Bartosz Szpak, Poland), a debut feature shot on 16mm, follows three young girls spending an endless summer in a sunlit palace as cracks begin to appear.

On Wednesday 11 November, BAFTA and IFTA-winning production designer Anna Rackard gives Authentic Worlds: A Production Design Masterclass, supported by Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland. Entry is free, and booking is essential.

Short film is at the heart of the festival. International Shorts on Friday 13 November presents seven films from Japan, China, the USA, Poland, the Netherlands and Canada. New Irish Shorts on Saturday 14 November showcases thirteen Irish films, seven of them by student filmmakers and one in the Irish language.

For audiences outside Dublin, fourteen features stream across Ireland on Silk Road ON DEMAND from 9 to 15 November, including The Blind Girl and an Elephant, winner of a Golden Goblet at the Shanghai International Film Festival, alongside Budapest Diaries, Diplodocus (Director’s Cut), A Palmful of Stars, Those Who Whistle After Dark, Torn, Texas Ollie and Where the Sun Shines Bright. Most of the festival’s short films are also available online.

Carla Mooney, Festival Director, said: “Most of the films at SRIFF would never otherwise reach Ireland. This year that includes Shanghai Golden Goblet winner The Blind Girl and an Elephant and Those Who Whistle After Dark from Türkiye, both streaming across Ireland. For fourteen years, Irish audiences have met these films halfway, and this year we welcome a delegation from Shanghai to Dublin for the festival.”