Films at the Fleadh – Fortune’s Wheel

We continue our series of posts on the films at 2015 Galway Film Fleadh, taking a look at Joe Lee’s Dublin International Film Festival award-winning documentary Fortune’s Wheel. The film screens Friday July 10th, at 5.30pm in the Town Hall Studio.

Fortune’s Wheel is a documentary based on Bill Stephens, an ordinary young man in 1950s Ireland with an extraordinary ambition: to become an international circus star. Or more specifically a lion-tamer! As you do.

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The film is also a love story about Bill’s teenage marriage to his beautiful partner Mai from neighbouring East Wall. Their double act, “Jungle Capers, Bill Stephens and Lovely Partner“, was a series of death-defying feats performed with a troupe of lions and dogs. With this act they hoped to break free from the suffocating reality of Irish life in the early 1950s.

Having won The Dublin Film Critics Circle Award for Best Irish Documentary at this year’s Dublin International Film Festival, the film is just finishing a 4 week run at the IFI, where it has broken the record for longest-running independent Irish film in the prestigious Dublin venue.

Fortune’s Wheel screens on Friday July 10th, at 5.30pm in the Town Hall Studio. Director Joe Lee will attend the screening.

https://youtu.be/gzUOQh99-nY