Rory Gallagher's spirit comes home to Cork on film
Joe Bonamassa's documentary about his lifelong debt to the Cork-raised guitar great screens at the Everyman on 18 November, with Dónal Gallagher for the Q&A.
The world premiere of Joe Bonamassa: The Spirit of Rory will take place at the Cork International Film Festival on Wednesday 18 November 2026. The screening is at the Everyman Theatre and will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Rory Gallagher's brother Dónal and a special guest.
The film follows American guitarist Joe Bonamassa through a lifelong admiration for Gallagher, the Ballyshannon-born, Cork-raised Irish guitar great. Its spine is live footage drawn from Bonamassa's own 2025 performances of the Irish Tour '74 set — staged in the year that marked three decades since Gallagher's death — together with interviews that bring in voices from the wider rock world. Among those who appear are Brian May of Queen and Slash of Guns N' Roses, both longstanding admirers of Gallagher's playing.
Why Cork, and why this film
For a city and an audience that live with British and Irish guitar music as daily fare, the booking is more than a festival curiosity. Gallagher's reputation rests on the records and the stagecraft: the tone, the attack, the refusal of fashion. Irish Tour '74 remains the live document most often held up when players explain what they heard in him. Bonamassa's decision to take that set out in 2025 and build a film around the debt is a direct line from one working guitarist to another across a generation.
The world premiere landing in Cork is no accident. Gallagher was raised in the city. The Everyman sits in the same urban landscape that formed him. Putting Bonamassa's film on that stage, with Dónal Gallagher in the room afterwards, ties the tribute back to the place rather than leaving it on the festival circuit alone. The special guest for the Q&A has not been named in the announcement.
May and Slash appear as peers who have repeatedly said what Gallagher's records meant to their playing. Their presence underlines the reach of a catalogue that never needed a reunion machine to stay audible: the records did the work. Bonamassa's project sits in that tradition of players talking to players, with the camera pointed at the music rather than at the myth. The finished film is the first chance a cinema audience will have to see that conversation framed as a whole.
Inside the festival frame
The Cork International Film Festival runs from 12 to 21 November 2026. It opens on 12 November at the Curtis Auditorium of the MTU Cork School of Music with the animated film Lucy Lost. Festival director Fiona Clark has underlined the partnership with MTU and a continuing commitment to Irish and international cinema side by side.
Joe Bonamassa: The Spirit of Rory is among the festival's music-led titles, a documentary slot that sits comfortably beside features and animation in a ten-day programme. For local audiences, the 18 November date is the one that matters: first public screening, home city, and the chance to hear Dónal Gallagher and the still-unnamed guest speak to the work once the credits have run.
Tickets and further programme details are on sale through the festival's channels. No wider theatrical run or additional Irish screenings have been announced. For now the story stops where it should — at the Everyman, on a Wednesday in mid-November, with a film about a Cork-raised guitarist finally opening in the city that raised him.
The film follows American guitarist Joe Bonamassa through a lifelong admiration for Gallagher, the Ballyshannon-born, Cork-raised Irish guitar great. Its spine is live footage drawn from Bonamassa's own 2025 performances of the Irish Tour '74 set — staged in the year that marked three decades since Gallagher's death — together with interviews that bring in voices from the wider rock world. Among those who appear are Brian May of Queen and Slash of Guns N' Roses, both longstanding admirers of Gallagher's playing.
Why Cork, and why this film
For a city and an audience that live with British and Irish guitar music as daily fare, the booking is more than a festival curiosity. Gallagher's reputation rests on the records and the stagecraft: the tone, the attack, the refusal of fashion. Irish Tour '74 remains the live document most often held up when players explain what they heard in him. Bonamassa's decision to take that set out in 2025 and build a film around the debt is a direct line from one working guitarist to another across a generation.
The world premiere landing in Cork is no accident. Gallagher was raised in the city. The Everyman sits in the same urban landscape that formed him. Putting Bonamassa's film on that stage, with Dónal Gallagher in the room afterwards, ties the tribute back to the place rather than leaving it on the festival circuit alone. The special guest for the Q&A has not been named in the announcement.
May and Slash appear as peers who have repeatedly said what Gallagher's records meant to their playing. Their presence underlines the reach of a catalogue that never needed a reunion machine to stay audible: the records did the work. Bonamassa's project sits in that tradition of players talking to players, with the camera pointed at the music rather than at the myth. The finished film is the first chance a cinema audience will have to see that conversation framed as a whole.
Inside the festival frame
The Cork International Film Festival runs from 12 to 21 November 2026. It opens on 12 November at the Curtis Auditorium of the MTU Cork School of Music with the animated film Lucy Lost. Festival director Fiona Clark has underlined the partnership with MTU and a continuing commitment to Irish and international cinema side by side.
Joe Bonamassa: The Spirit of Rory is among the festival's music-led titles, a documentary slot that sits comfortably beside features and animation in a ten-day programme. For local audiences, the 18 November date is the one that matters: first public screening, home city, and the chance to hear Dónal Gallagher and the still-unnamed guest speak to the work once the credits have run.
Tickets and further programme details are on sale through the festival's channels. No wider theatrical run or additional Irish screenings have been announced. For now the story stops where it should — at the Everyman, on a Wednesday in mid-November, with a film about a Cork-raised guitarist finally opening in the city that raised him.