Hollywood actor and producer Ben Stiller congratulates NI director on scooping prestigious award

Hollywood A-lister Ben Stiller was among the manifold well wishers congratulating hugely talented NI director Aoife McArdle after she won IFTAs Rising Star award.

McArdle, who grew up in Omagh, Co Tyrone, won the award at the ceremony on Sunday night (May 7) at a star-studded bash held at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Dublin.

Ben and Aoife worked together as directors on the series Severance on Apple TV – and Ben was among the first to tweet "Congrats Aoife!!” on Sunday night.

Severance, McArdle’s most recent work, explores the border between work and play, between professional and personal lives, and how there is a severance between the two that sometimes fades to a blur and at other times creates a vast gulf between office and home life, so that you almost have two distinct and disparate identities.

In January, Aoife told another media outlet: "As soon as I read the script, I was really into it, I felt it was very me in a way that very few things are.

"I loved that it was so idiosyncratic, that it was an underdog story, that it was about people who were escaping trauma but ultimately the parallel reality of people wanting to sever their everyday lives from their working lives.

"The themes of what it means to be a work drone, working for this faceless machine, I think a lot of us feel like that way a lot of the time, especially any one of us who has done a job we don't like."

The show starring Mark Scott, Patricia Arquette, Christopher Walken, John Turturro, and Britt Lower has been a huge success, garnering a whopping 14 Emmy nominations for its first season, a surreal rumination on the conventions of office life and its relationship to the personal that seems to ponder existential angst, identity, the vagaries of memory and the almost Kafka-esque, bewildering nature of corporate procedures and bureaucracy.

The Directors Guild of America (voted for by other directors), nominated Aoife, 45, who has also directed the music video for U2’s single Every Breaking Wave, in the Dramatic Series category for her directorial work.

She has said: "I would never have dreamt that I would ever be anywhere near Hollywood, it’s funny, but it's just getting the opportunity to work with such incredible actors.

"Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette, they're just actors I've admired for so long, but you don't have time to be starstruck, it's such an intense way of working.”

McArdle studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin, where, alongside creative writing, she developed an interest in photography and cinematography, shooting and editing films on Super 8 and Mini DV.

She went on to complete a Masters in Film & TV production at Bournemouth film school and began her directorial career after moving to London in 2005.

In 2021, she directed the short film and immersive installation All of This Unreal Time featuring Cillian Murphy performing a monologue written by Max Porter with music composed by Jon Hopkins, Aaron Dessner and Bryce Dessner. The piece launched at the Manchester International Festival.

Her debut feature-length film, Kissing Candice, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017 and at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2018 to critical acclaim.

In 2015, she was approached by Jefferson Hack from Dazed magazine to write and direct a short film to accompany U2's track Every Breaking Wave.

The film received praise from Spike Jonze and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and was nominated for four UK Music Video awards.

She has created music videos for Jon Hopkins and Bryan Ferry, television commercials for Honda, and Nike and Super Bowl commercials for Audi, Toyota and Squarespace.

Her work in advertising has notably promoted social equality.

McArdle’s narratives often centre around outsider characters and existential themes, moving between the authentic and the surreal.

Her visual style is largely characterised by distinctive locations, long, choreographed tracking, crane shots and low-key, atmospheric lighting.