The premiere of ONCE UPON A TIME IN A CINEMA by top filmmaker David Gleeson was projected onto the silver screen of the former Royal Cinema on Cecil Street in Limerick closed since nearly 40 years. The film was shot on location there, making the premiere a truly meta experience: a story set in a cinema in real time during a film screening, now having its own screening in the very cinema where it was filmed.

Actor Colin Morgan plays Earl Clancy, the beleaguered manager of a small-town cinema, fighting to hold things together on a chaotic Friday night while facing pressure to sell up. Cinema runs deep in the Gleeson family, with his grandfather and father having run cinemas in Cappamore and across the west of Ireland. He describes the film as “a love letter to an experience that’s been woven into the Irish soul for a hundred years, a film that celebrates the rollercoaster of emotion that has forever bonded us in the company of strangers.”

The gala screening, attended by cast and crew including director David Gleeson and producer Nathalie Lichtenthaeler, was part of the seventh Catalyst International Film Festival. It proved a hugely nostalgic occasion for a Limerick audience, many of whom appeared in the film as extras, experiencing the unique thrill of watching themselves on screen in the same cinema where they had stood before the cameras.
As seen in RTÉ · Irish Examiner · Screen Daily · I Love Limerick · Limerick Post