The movie “Stella Days” set in 1950s Ireland, and starring Irish American Hollywood veteran, Martin Sheen, is set to be screened in New York City. It’s also, happily, receiving widespread release in video-on-demand format (VOD).

“Stella Days” tells the tale of how a small town cinema in rural Ireland in the 1950s becomes the setting for a dramatic struggle between Rome and Hollywood, and a man and his conscience.

Martin Sheen stars as Father Daniel Berry in a story about the excitement of the unknown versus the security of the familiar.

Speaking to Movies.ie earlier this year, Sheen revealed that his interest in Berry’s story was piqued when a man from his ancestral Irish village of Borrisokane, in County Tipperary, gave him a memoir of the parish priest, who had been a huge film buff and who had opened the first cinema there.

After that, Sheen’s friend bought the film rights and several years passed before they had the script and the funding. 

Speaking about his passion for the movie, Sheen said, “What I loved about Stella Days, it was a priest who was reawakened to his humanity and less about his vocation, but about his person-hood. He had lived an honest life and he was motivated by love, but there was a missing link, in that it didn't begin by choice, he felt that his choice had been foreclosed as a child. He found himself and he realized that he had lived an honest life, so he could go on.”

“Stella Days” will be screened at Quad Cinemas, in New York City on June 22.

The movie will also be available on demand from 22nd June.

For more information visit the Tribeca Film website here.

Here’s the trailer for the movie: