This year’s Academy Award nominations were announced earlier this week, and include the expected nods for last year’s big hits. Everything Everywhere All At Once, starring Michelle Yeoh, leads the field with eleven nominations, with Edward Berger’s remake of All Quiet On The Western Front gaining nine nominations, and Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis picking up eight. In terms of technical awards, Top Gun: Maverick weighs in an impressive four alongside nods for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.

However, one of the biggest stories of the announcement is how well the Irish film industry has performed. Though small, the movie industry is vigorous, with recent releases including the immigrant drama Aisha starring Letitia Wright, and the Irish-language film Róise and Frank. But a whopping fourteen nominations is a remarkable achievement for the sector and testifies to the quality content being made in the country. Here’s why the Irish film industry deserves every one.

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The Banshees of Inisherin

     Searchlight Pictures

There’s no getting away from this quiet, moving tragicomedy, which bagged nine nominations, a new record for an Irish movie. In the best odd couple traditions, the two protagonists — Brendan Gleeson’s Colm and Colin Farrell’s Pádraic — would never spend time with one another were it not for the fact that they are forced to, living as they do on the fictional Irish island of Inisherin. Then one day, Colm decides to end their friendship, a decision as inexplicable to Pádraic as it is fateful.

Benefiting from flawless direction from Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri director Martin McDonagh (who snagged nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay), Farrell and Gleeson are in the running for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively, with Better Call Saul star Kerry Condon also receiving a nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

An Cailín Ciúin/The Quiet Girl

     Super

This movie, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival last February, has made history as the first Irish-language film to be nominated in the category of Best International Feature Film. Based on a novella by Irish novelist Claire Keegan, An Cailín Ciúin is set at the turn of the 1980s and tells the story of Cáit, a nine-year-old girl living in a crowded, chaotic, and neglectful household. As her mother falls pregnant once more, the decision is made to send Cáit to Wexford to live with a cousin of the family.

Set in the spectacular environs of rural Ireland, the film proved a revelation on its release in Ireland, where it broke box office records for an Irish-language production. Starring Carrie Crowley (Vikings), Andrew Bennett (Foyle’s War), Michael Patric (Supernatural, The 100), and Catherine Clinch in her debut role as the girl of the title, An Cailín Ciúin is up against some stiff competition in the category, especially from Santiago Mitre’s critically acclaimed feature Argentina, 1985, which won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. But the nomination on its own demonstrates that the warm reviews for the Irish-language drama Róise and Frank, which is due for release in the United States later this year, were not flashes in the pan.

Aftersun

     Mubi/A24

Though not an Irish film (it was financed by BBC Films, the British Film Institute, and Screen Scotland among others), the success of Aftersun was the cause of jubilation in the Irish film industry due to the Best Actor nod that has gone the way of Paul Mescal. Having spent most of his early twenties in theater, Mescal is a relative newcomer to film — Aftersun was only his second full-length feature and his debut starring role.

But Mescal’s mesmerizing performance as a depressed father holidaying with his tweenage daughter in Turkey drew praise across the board and has earned him a slew of other nominations for film festival prizes and major awards, including a BAFTA. Mescal’s quality is already bringing him increased attention. He is due to make several appearances on the big screen in the coming months, with a starring role in the Australian movie adaptation of Iain Reid’s science fiction novel Foe, opposite Andrew Scott (Sherlock, Fleabag) and Claire Foy (The Crown, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain) in the film adaptation of Taichi Yamada’s fantasy novel Strangers, and Richard Linklater’s adaptation of the 1981 Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along, which also stars Beanie Feldstein (Orange Is The New Black, What We Do In The Shadows) and Ben Platt (The People We Hate At The Wedding, Theater Camp), and is currently in production.

Add into the mix a clutch of nominations for behind-the-scenes work for Irish editors (Jonathan Redmond, Elvis) and visual effects designers (Richard Baneham, Avatar: The Way of Water) and it’s clear that the future is looking up for the Irish film industry.