Kathy Raftery
Independent Filmmaker
Organization: Fetket Ltd
Biography
Kathy Raftery Director/Producer/Writer
Kathy is an independent filmmaker whose short films and documentaries have screened at festivals and exhibitions in Ireland and internationally. Her recent short documentary “One by one, the lights go out” screened as part of Irish Film Festa (Rome) and Docs Ireland in 2025. “A Roscommon Snapshot” won Best Foreign Film at the Veterans Film Festival in L.A. (2024) and was runner-up in the Virtual Audience Awards at the Waterford Film Festival (2024). “The Buildings” screened at IFTUK 2024 and the Galway Film Fleadh in 2023. Her earlier work “Maid in America” was an award winner at the Chicago Irish Film Festival (2020) and also screened at Docs Ireland that same year.
In 2025, Kathy was shortlisted for the AIB Portrait Prize, with her work set to be exhibited at the National Gallery of Ireland. Her films have been included in gallery exhibitions at the Golden Thread Gallery (Belfast), Black Church Print Studio (Dublin) and Roscommon Arts Centre.
In 2024, she was awarded the Creative Heartlands Adaptation Film Bursary Award. She began her career working as a camera trainee on Irish features before moving into directing and documentary storytelling. Her RTÉ Radio 1 documentary “Mayo Boy, Vietnam Hero” was a finalist in the Heroes Category at the 2017 New York International Radio Festival and this is the story Kathy is adapting into her debut feature-length documentary, supported by Screen Ireland and the WRAP Fund.
Films
One by one, the lights go out (2024)
Role: Director
As the filmmaker’s 87 year old father steps away from the land he has tended for decades, the film captures the quiet end of an era for a family farm steeped in history and memory.
Narrated by the acclaimed Irish writer Michael Harding and inspired by his essay, the story is a tender meditation on legacy, loss and the passage of time.
A Roscommon Snapshot (2023)
Role: Independent Filmmaker
From the quiet lanes of Roscommon to the frontlines of Vietnam, three local men, unknown to each other at home, cross paths in war, their story captured in a single snapshot that echoes across time.
In 1972 a photograph of three Roscommon men serving in the Vietnam War was printed back home on the front page of the Roscommon Herald. It was only on this day in Saigon, thousands of miles away from home that these three men got to know of each other, even though they grew up only miles apart in different communities in the West of Ireland. This short documentary tells the story of this photograph and of how these three men ended up in the Vietnam War. (Short Film Duration: 12 Minutes)
Awrards: Best Foreign Film – Veteran’s Film Festival, L.A 2023 & runner up virtual audience award, Waterford Film Festival 2023.
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