A SPECIAL screening of an award-winning Fermanagh filmmaker’s movie debut is taking place in Enniskillen tonight (Monday) for Film Hub NI’s Cinema Day.

As part of the province-wide celebrations, Fermanagh Film Club is showing Stephen Fingleton’s acclaimed The Survivalist at The Regal entertainment venue on Wellington Road, which was, appropriately enough, a cinema in a previous life!

Cinema Day, presented by Film Hub NI (part of the Film Audience Network), is a new initiative which celebrates 120 years of film exhibition in Northern Ireland.

The Enniskillen event, which starts at 7.30pm, will open with local historian, Marion Maxwell, giving a short talk on the history of The Regal, with reference to the broader history of film in Northern Ireland.

Following this, there will be a screening of The Survivalist, which garnered widespread critical praise when it was released in cinemas earlier this year.

Fingleton, who was born in Derry, but grew up in Warrenpoint and Enniskillen, has already picked up a number of accolades for his work on the film, including Best Debut Director at the British Independent Film Awards, Best New Narrative Director and Special Jury Mention at Tribeca.

The post-apocalyptic thriller, which was filmed in Northern Ireland, also received a nomination in the Outstanding Debut category at this year’s British Academy Film Awards.

Asked to describe The Survivalist, he told The Impartial Reporter in February: “It’s a very, very intense film set in a time of calamity. Imagine a Hitchcock movie after the collapse of society. That’s what we were aspiring to.”

Set in a time of starvation, up-and-coming Belfast actor Martin McCann stars in the title role as a man living off a small plot of land hidden deep in forest protecting his crop from intruders with his shotgun and improvised traps.

But the long years alone have taken their toll on him and he is beginning to lose his grip on reality.

Everything changes when a starving woman called Kathryn (Olwen Fouere) and her teenage daughter, Milja (Mia Goth), discover the farm.

The special screening of this captivating thriller will be followed by a question-and-answer session with its award-winning writer-director, who was also named by BAFTA as a Breakthrough Brit and Brit To Watch in 2015.

Admission to the event in Enniskillen on Monday night will cost £5, or £3 concession for students. The entrance to The Regal is beside Toytown on Wellington Road. For more information, visit the film club’s website.