aemi announces ‘Developing Your Practice as a Film Artist’ participants 2026-2027
Published date: 31 Aug 2026
aemi is thrilled to announce Cal Byrne, Akshata Dalvi, Charlie Dineen, Emma Finn, Katie McFadden, Ben Malcolmson, Rabie Mustapha, Doireann O’Malley and Holly Pickering as our 2025-2026 Artist Support Programme participants.
In 2026 the number of applicants for this programme again, far exceeded our expectations with a significant increase on previous rounds. Out of the total applications received, 20 of these were shortlisted. The final decision making then was determined with the support of our external assessor Rose Baker, Programmer for Belfast Film Festival.
We were incredibly impressed with the applications this year and fully appreciate the time and energy that goes into making these kinds of submissions. Many participants on the programme during the second and most recent year are repeat applicants and so we do encourage interested film artists to apply again in 2027 as your work continues to develop and to stay in touch with aemi across the year.
We very much look forward to working with the incoming group throughout 2026 and into 2027.
Cal Byrne’s films capture how people interact with, and are shaped by, the landscapes around them. Through long-form observation and encounter based research, his intimate character studies explore individuals living on the fringes of society, capturing how their daily routine and rituals embody their lived experience. He graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 2023 with a bachelors in Fine Art Media in 2023, Since then he has took part in two artist residencies, one in Lisbon and Latvia, with his latest film made in Latvia premiering at the 6th IDFF Artdocfest Riga. Throughout the next year he will explore new approaches in capturing the fading stories of his character portraits in his practice through his work made in residencies in Japan and Germany.
Akshata Dalvi is a multidisciplinary filmmaker and visual anthropologist based in Dublin, Ireland. Trained in Architecture and Visual Anthropology, her practice explores the relationship between space, culture, cinema and everyday life. Her work blends spatial design with human stories, capturing how people live, create, and adapt within changing environments. Akshata works across documentary filmmaking, creative production and art direction. She has received film fellowships for her documentary work and continues to develop an independent filmmaking practice focused on people, places, climate stories and everyday stories.
Charlie Dineen is a Dublin-based artist and film maker working primarily with multiformat analogue photography and film. His work spans abstract and conceptual approaches; from street photography and documentary to self-portraiture. Central to his practice is a deep belief in the enduring magic of analogue processes and the creative possibilities that stem from working with an unbroken chain of light in the darkroom. Dineen’s evolving film work is grounded in the same sensibility. Layered sound and visuals are elegantly interwoven to create work that is atmospheric, resonant and distinctive. His graduate short film, The City Beneath Me, has been exhibited at the RHA and IMMA, as well as internationally in galleries across Indonesia. In 2025, he was awarded the Emerging Artist Award at the RDS Visual Arts Awards, alongside residency awards with PhotoIreland and Graphic Studio. Most recently, he received an Agility Award from the Arts Council.
Emma Finn is an artist and filmmaker. Finn pays attention to what escapes logical understanding between humans and non-humans, particularly what goes unnoticed or undocumented in archives. Marrying high-end with lo-fi filmmaking techniques, she constructs playful worlds to unsettle narratives and systems that uphold oppression. Finn adopts counterintuitive methodologies to destabilise and reveal absurdity, inviting collaboration from individuals with unique wisdom in unexpected ways, both in front of and behind the camera. The Edinburgh Art Festival has commissioned her film work, and the Royal Academy of Scotland has included her work in their collection. Finn is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, supported by The London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP). Finn’s supervisors are Aura Satz and Emily LaBarge.
Katie McFadden is a filmmaker and researcher; their work foregrounds diverse embodied experience, prompting audiences to imagine futures grounded in care, accountability and ecological attunement. Their most recent short film premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival, and their debut feature film is in development with support from Northern Ireland Screen.
Ben Malcolmson is a visual artist and curator from Belfast. His fine art practice explores the parameters of photography, video, and sculpture, using alternative photographic processes to examine land and identity. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include here and there at PS³, Belfast (2025); Horizon at Flax Art Studios Project Space, Belfast (2025); Shared Histories – Diverse Views at Nerve Centre, Derry~Londonderry (2025) and Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny (2024); Lands In-between at QSS, Belfast (2022); and Murmur at Belfast Exposed, Belfast (2020). Selected group exhibitions include Picturing the Border: 1921 – 2026 at Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda (2026); Songs to a Siren at The Model, Sligo (2026); TALENTS at Photo Museum Ireland, Dublin (2025); Tilt the interval at IMMA, Dublin (2025/26); Belfast Film Festival (2025); and I feel how my eye turns at Screen Service x Abbey Arts Centre, Ballyshannon (2025). He received a year long residential residency at Fire Station Artist Studios, Dublin (2027-28) and was awarded as commission artist on ‘Shared Histories – Diverse Views’ from Photo Museum Ireland (2024), he holds a First Class Honours BA in Photography with Video from Ulster University (2021) and diploma in International Studies at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (2019-20). (Image Credit Rebecca Cairns)
Rabie Mustapha is a Galway based Palestinian/naturalised Irish film director and editor. His latest work is the participatory documentary “ Children of Here” which tackles questions of diversification and homesickness through the eyes of young children. In 2022, he directed “The Cities I Live In” which is a creative documentary that is centred around his experience of leaving Beirut in 2020 to become a father in Belfast. The film received positive critical acclaim and screened in many festivals In Ireland and beyond, including DOC NYC and Glasgow Shorts Film Festival. In 2023 it won the Best Irish Short Documentary at Docs Ireland. In 2024 he worked as a visual consultant and archive researcher for the critically acclaimed feature Documentary Burkitt by Éanna Mac Cana. In 2025 he edited Hearsay at Point Zero by the Belfast based visual artist Marta Dyczkowska.
Doireann O’Malley is a filmmaker based between Berlin and Ireland, their moving-image work constitutes a research-led, interdisciplinary enquiry into how queer and neurodiverse subjectivity is produced within ideological, technological, and socio-political systems. Working across film and video installation, O’Malley developscomplex environments that critically examine the formation of identity beyond fixed or
normative frameworks. Positioned at the intersection of queer and feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and computational thought, their practice advances a distinct methodology combining collaborative fieldwork, speculative narrative construction, and embodied research. Engaging with diverse contexts, including queer communities, family constellation practices, rural island life in Ireland, and ritual sites in India and Nepal, O’Malley generates situated forms of knowledge that challenge dominant epistemologies and modes of representation. Their work has been presented internationally at the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Hugh Lane Gallery, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), mumok cinema, Vienna, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, LOOP Barcelona, Scottish Queer International Film Festival, National Sculpture Factory and Cork International Film Festival, BPA// Raum, Berlin, Galerie Nordenhake, Mexico City, Crespo Foundation, osmo/za, Ljubljana (Rehearsals for Reality), Shedhalle Zürich, and Biennale Zielona Góra, among others.
Holly Pickering is an artist from Waterford, Ireland. Working across moving-image, experimental writing and publishing, her practice explores questions surrounding interpersonal communication, translation and linguistics. Her films have recently been screened at IMMA (2026), DISSOLUTIONS, The Complex, Dublin (2025), and Ormond Artist Studios (2025). Her publication, Good/That’s/Yes/Oh, was published with Mirror Lamp Press (2025). Recent awards include the Arts Council Bursary Award (2026) and the Waterford Artlinks Bursary Award (2025).
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