Fortune’s Wheel
Presented by Irish Arts Center and Irish Film Institute
Directed by Joe Lee

After the screening, please enjoy a talkback with Director Joe Lee, moderated by Emmy winning writer/director Niall McKay

Tuesday, May 17 | 7 pm

Winner of The Dublin Film Critics Circle Award for Best Irish Documentary
Jameson Dublin Film Festival 2015

Winner of the Dublin Film Critics Circle Award for Best Irish Documentary
Dublin International Film Festival 2015

Fortune’s Wheel brings to life the remarkable, implausible story of Bill Stephens, an ordinary young Dubliner in the 1950s with an extraordinary ambition: to become an international circus star as a lion tamer.

The documentary tells the love story about Bill and his young, beautiful wife Mai, from East Wall. Their double act, "Jungle Capers, Bill Stephens and Lovely Partner," was a series of death-defying feats with a troupe of lions and dogs designed to thrill audiences in the circus tent and on the theatre stage. With this act they hoped to move to the United States, but things went terribly wrong when, in November 1951, one of their animals escaped. The story gained national and international attention and also set in train a series of events that would lead to tragedy. It is only now – after 60 years of both myth making and silence – that two families and a community have come together to tell the story in full.

76 minutes, Ireland, 2015