Logline
Discover the flip side to the ‘normal’ working week as we follow the lives of those Irish people working in the late night bars, restaurants and on the streets of Europe on festival week, working while the 9 to 5′ers play, and playing while they work.
Synopsis
The streets, bars and restaurants are a playground for the majority of Europe’s workers. But what about the adventurous Irish travellers and ex-pats who service this multi-million euro playground? What do they see and know that we cannot? Where is their playground? This 6 x 30 min observational documentary series will reveal the untold story behind the festivals, the nights out, the vice and the parties. Their story reveals the true heart of these cities at night.
Follow the characters that make Seville’s SEMANA SANTA the most important celebration in the town. Watched by over a million people, the festival climaxes on Holy Friday, when an explosion of sounds, instruments and songs flare all over the city. A barman, a student working at the festival and an Irish reveller living in Seville take us through the restaurants, cafes, bars and snack shops that define this glorious experience after hours.
Munich’s ‘Oktoberfest’ remains the world’s largest beer festival, with 60000 hectolitres of beer consumed by millions of revellers. The Wies’n becomes a beer-drinking city, with its own post office, police force and fire department. We tag along with a group or Irish ex-pats, students and holidaymakers over the two-week period, partying hard after hours and revealing a side to the city no visitor has seen before.
The Galway Races have become the greatest of all Irish racing festivals, raising a fervour in the city that is religious in its intensity. Meet a local barman spending his time either pulling the pints or pulling the women, a foreign student working in an exclusive restaurant and the manager of the bar at the track as they try to survive race week.
Every summer, the picturesque medieval and art nouveau city Riga comes alive for the ‘Rigas Ritmi’, the Rythmic Music Festival attended by musicians from all over the world. Join the Irish after hours crew as the city is revealed to us through their eyes.
For 10 days in July, Copenhagen is taken over by the Jazz Festival. The clubs and small cafes in Copenhagen are a vital part of the festival, with concerts situated in the streets, on historic places/squares and along the canals. Follow the nightly work vigil of an escort girl, a nightclub worker and a hotel manager.
The annual ‘Music in Old Krakow‘ is seen as one of the oldest and most significant musical events in this historic central European metropolis. The Old Town alone hosts over 4000 clubs and pubs. Meet a bar owner, a street performer and lap dancer and discover the city that has always been a magnet for extra-ordinary people.
The Irish have well and truly made a name for themselves living, working and partying hard in cities across Europe. The world they will reveal is one the typical Irish holidaymaker will know thanks to low fair air flights and weekend breaks, but a perspective on it few of them have gained before. How better to present them with the after hours playground of Europe’s cities than through the eyes of the people on the ground?
[...] After Hours Europe [...]