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Paddy Breathnach

Paddy Breathnach started his directing career making natural history documentaries. He went on to direct a number of sports documentaries and observational documentaries for Treasure Films.

His first feature, Ailsa, won the Award for Best First/Second Film at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Breathnach’s second feature I Went Down (BBC films) starring Brendan Gleeson, also won the New Directors at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 1997. At Thessaloniki and Bogota, Paddy won the Best Director Award.  The film was released in many territories and was screen at festivals including Sundance.

In 1997/98 Breathnach produced SouthPaw, a feature documentary that was selected for Sundance in 1999. It got a US and UK theatrical release. Breathnach then went on to direct Blow Dry (Miramax) which was released in  2001. His next film was Man About Dog, which was produced by Robert Walpole and Simon Channing Williams and was released in 2003 becoming one of the most successful independently produced Irish films at the Irish box office. Breathnach made ‘Shrooms in 2006 and  Redmist in 2008. 

In 2012 he completed the feature length documentary “An Oiche a Gineadh m’Athair” for TG4. His seventh film “Viva” premiered at Telluride Film Festival and also screened at Sundance. It was shortlisted for a foreign language Oscar in 2016.