Now that ADIFF '16 is only a couple of weeks away and the programme has been officially launched, people have been snapping up tickets left and right for some of the key events this year.
There's a pretty wide variety of films on offer this year, but with so many to choose from it, you could easily run out of ink in your highlight marker. Not to worry because we've gone out and done you a friggin' service by picking out sixteen of the must-see films at this year's festival.
Here's our top picks in no particular order...
16. GREEN ROOM (Cineworld, Screen 9, February 24th - 6:15pm)
Blue Ruin featured highly in our Top 10 of 2013 and with good reason - it's utterly brilliant. Since then, director Jeremy Saulnier's been offered all manner of high-profile gigs, including directing a key episode of True Detective's second season. He passed on all these, instead opting to make a horror-thriller with Patrick Stewart and Anton Yelchin about neo-Nazis attacking a punk band. Green Room has been called this generation's Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Get excited.
15. ANOMALISA (Light House Cinema, Screen 1, February 23rd - 9:00pm)
Charlie Kaufman's made a career out of genre-bending, mind-warping films that truly stand the test of time. Whether it's Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Adaptation or Synecdoche New York, Kaufman's films stay with you for many years. His latest work, Anomalisa, tells the story - via stopmotion animation - of a man who's trapped in the rat-race and mundanity of life and tries to escape with a young woman he meets at a lonely hotel.
14. HIGH-RISE (Light House Cinema, Screen 1, February 22nd - 8:15pm)
With an all-star cast that includes Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans and Jeremy Irons, High-Rise is a psychological horror set in a '70s sci-fi dystopian apartment block. Yeah, try saying that in one breath. Basically, the apartment block / high-rise is a microcosm of society. Toffs live at the top, poor people at the bottom and just about everything is self-contained in the high-rise. However, when power and electricity breaks down, so to does people's grasp on their sanity and pretty soon, BAD things happen.
13. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (Light House Cinema, Screen 1, February 22nd - 2:00pm)
Sergio Leone's classic Western runs for a grand total of 170 minutes - that's ten minutes shy of three hours. Sure, it's an endurance test, but what you get in return is, hands down, one of the greatest Westerns ever made. In fact, it's probably one of the best films ever made. A sweeping saga that sees a retired prostitute (Clauda Cardinale, who'll be attending the screening) arrives in a desert backwater as the owner of a prime piece of land that's wanted by a railroad baron. Violent, epic, iconic - Once Upon A Time In The West is a classic in every sense of the word.
12. DEMOLITION (Cineworld, Screen 9, February 23rd - 8:30pm)
Jake Gyllenhaal teams up with the director of Dallas Buyer's Club for this personal drama. Gyllenhaal is a successful investment banker who completely unravels when his wife dies suddenly in a car-crash. He begins to write a series of increasingly personal letters to a customer service representative of a vending machine company as a means of dealing with his issues, culminating him attempting to destroy his home and life.
11. TIME OUT OF MIND (Savoy, Screen 1, February 26th - 7:30pm)
Richard Gere stars as a homeless man who's struggling to survive, one day at a time. Caught in the revolving door of homelessness and men's shelters, he eventually tries to put himself back on course and reconnect with his daughter, Jena Malone. Richard Gere's performance is said to be one of the best of the year and, by all accounts, proves just how versatile an actor he really is.
10. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (Light House Cinema, Screen 3, February 21st - 8:30pm)
The original conspiracy thriller, Angela Lansbury, Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh star in this genuinely disturbing tale of brainwashing and Reds under the bed. A platoon of US soldiers in the Korean War have been brainwashed by Communist psychologists in an apparent plot to install a sleeper agent at the very top of the US Government. Homeland, The Parallax View and basically every conspiracy thriller owes a debt to The Manchurian Candidate.
9. THE PROPAGANDA GAME (Light House Cinema, Screen 3, February 20th - 9:00pm)
Speaking of brainwashing, this documentary on the lengths North Korea will go to promote themselves as a tolerant nation really is something. Spanish documentarian Alvaro Longoria travels to the Hermit Kingdom and, inexplicably, finds himself being guided by a fellow Spaniard who is a true believer of Kim Jong-Un and his regime. Bizarre beyond belief, The Propaganda Game shows how far people will go to stay in control.
8. ZOOTROPOLIS (Savoy, Screen 1, February 28th - 2:00pm)
Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin star in this animated comedy caper about a sly fox and an over-eager rabbit cop who are at opposite ends of the social order in Zootropolis, a city where animals all live together as one. When several mammals start going missing, it's up to one intrepid bunny and her cunning fox partner to solve the case. Witty, knowing and full of comedy, Zootropolis is the perfect easy-going film for a Sunday morning.
7. SING STREET (Savoy, Screen 1, February 18th - 7:00pm)
The early word on John Carney's follow-up to Once and Begin Again has it as an ode to the likes of The Commitments and Dublin in the '80s, all New Romantics and bottles of TK Red Lemonade. A young boy is pulled from his leafy, Southside school and thrown into an inner-city school after his parents happily admit that they're basically broke. However, it's not all bad as he soon discovers a beautiful girl and tries to create a band to get her attention. Smart, funny and a fantastic soundtrack to boot, Sing Street could easily be mentioned this time next year for Oscar glory.
6. SURPRISE FILM (Savoy, Screen 1, February 28th - 5:00pm)
It's always one of the highlights of the festival and never fails to be a real event for film fans. We've got a few ideas about what'll be the surprise film this year that we'll share later on. Suffice to say, we think we have this year's film cracked. We're almost sure of it.
5. TRADERS (Light House Cinema, Screen 1, February 20th - 6:30pm)
Love / Hate's Killian Scott and Game of Thrones' John Bradley star in this Fight Club-esque satire about the world of cutthroat capitalism, taken to its extremes. In the aftermath of the Financial Collapse, an investment banker comes up with a new way to make money - 'trading'. Two people empty out their bank accounts, liquidate their assets and meet in a remote location where they'll fight to the death. The winner takes the loser's winnings. Brutally effective, Traders is a look at the financial market from an entirely different perspective.
4. TRUTH (Cineworld, Screen 8, February 20th - 6:30pm)
Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett star in this dramatisation of the investigation by Dan Rather and CBS's 60 Minutes programme and the eventual fallout resulting from it. Redford stars as Dan Rather, the veteran broadcaster who revealed on his primetime news programme a shocking story concerning George W. Bush's war record in Vietnam. Under extraordinary pressure from both CBS and political elements, the story is investigated with unexpected outcomes for all.
3. VIVA (Savoy, Screen 1, February 28th - 7:45pm)
Closing out the festival is Viva, Paddy Breathnach's take on Cuban drag culture. A young man, Jesus, is scratching a living together in Havana when he is drawn to the glamour and glitter of drag culture and adopts a new persona, Viva. However, when his criminal father returns from an extended prison sentence, his life is thrown into chaos as his father not only condemns his lifestyle choice, but forbids him from frequenting the nightclub where he acts.
2. HAIL, CAESAR! (Savoy, Screen 1, February 20th - 11:30am)
The Coen Brothers' return to Old Hollywod for this caper-comedy about a missing actor (George Clooney) who's kidnapped by The Future. Really. Josh Brolin stars as Eddie Mannix, a "fixer" for a Hollywood studio who must try to collect $100,000 to rescue the kidnapped Clooney and keep the production of Hail, Caesar! going.
1. MICHAEL COLLINS (Savoy, Screen 1, February 20th - 2:00pm)
Neil Jordan's sweeping epic on the life and times of Michael Collins and the birth of the state, Liam Neeson stars as the Big Fella whilst the sadly-departed Alan Rickman plays DeValera. Sure, it's not exactly accurate or even remotely historically correct, but it sure is a huge amount of fun. Charles Dance plays the treacherous leader of the Cairo Gang, sent to wipe out Neeson's band of rebels whilst Stephen Rea plays a double-agent in the Dublin Metropolitan Police.
