Last week the Irish Film Board was awarded a budget increase of almost 15% by the Minister for Arts Sport and Tourism John O'Donoghue, which brings its total allocation up to 19.6m, but apart from The Tiger's Tail and David Gleeson's powerful thriller The Front Line . . . it too disappointed at the box office, grossing a mere 78,537 . . . few Irish movies have attempted to deal with contemporary Ireland.

"In France people only see movies about the Black and Tan war and the misery of Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s, " Pierre Joannon told me in Cognac last weekend at the launch of his new book Histoire de l'Irlande et des Irlandais at the annual French Salon of European Literature, which this year features Irish culture as its theme. "They can't understand how you have that misery and you have the Celtic Tiger. I'm always urging people who organise film festivals in France to try to get a few movies about contemporary Ireland because Ireland is no longer like Annie Dunne . . . the other shortlisted writers were Hugo Hamilton, Colm Toibin, William Trevor, Nuala O'Faolain and Sean O'Reilly . . . also screened a minifestival of Irish movies, including Jim Sheridan's In America, which was introduced by Peter Sheridan, a documentary on Edna O'Brien, Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Mike Newell's Into The West, Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters, Gerry Stembridge's Guiltrip and Joe Comerford's High Boot Benny.