Hannah Mamalis’s award-winning debut short may have been titled Baby Steps, but the talented actor-cum-playwright-cum-filmmaker is now making giant strides in the industry.
Mamalis, who won a clutch of prizes on the festival circuit for Baby Steps, including an audience award at Dublin International Film Festival 2024, is currently adapting her own absurdist one-woman stage show The Egg Is A Lonely Hunter into her first feature Stranded. It was selected for the inaugural Storyhouse Lab, a feature film development programme with Element Pictures, as well as chosen for Screen Ireland’s Perspectives development scheme.
Performing it live first, she says, helped, as you can “literally look the audience in the eyes. You learn about yourself, and you learn about what you naturally have to offer an audience.”
Her second short In Between, starring Philippa Dunne, is scheduled to film in May. Mamalis, who grew up in Galway and is now based in Dublin, describes it as a “chill, emotional sci-fi” about a clone at the end of her life cycle who is writing a letter to the clone who will replace her.
“I realised quickly with the acting that I couldn’t be waiting around for other people to give me work,” says Mamalis of her multi-pronged approach. “That lack of control just did not sit with me. I’m super impatient. I want to get stuff going.”
Mamalis has certainly done that. The past few years have also seen her develop, co-write and feature in RTÉ Player’s original sitcom Good Boy, as well as work in writers’ rooms for Green Pavilion and Element Pictures. She is also developing Irish social satire/murder mystery Corcu Island with Calico Pictures, and Spinning with Keeper Pictures, a comedy drama following women in a family who are all called Mary.
As with many of her projects, Mamalis has one eye on comedy and the other on pathos. “One of my favourite things is making people laugh, but my ultimate favourite thing is making people laugh after or before you’ve made them cry,” she says.
“It’s satisfying for me to have that range of emotion. That’s the real sweet spot.”
Contact: Hannah Mamalis
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