2022 Alumni Awardee Cleona Ní Chrualaoi

Cleona Ní Chrualaoi is an award winning film and television producer. She graduated from the BA in Journalism in 2001 and received an RTÉ Award for an “outstanding undergraduate thesis” on missing persons which was later nominated for a PPI Radio Award. 

Her media career began as a reporter and presenter on CKRFM and Newstalk before migrating to television to work as a freelance researcher and later a producer. 

Cleona has produced many flagship programmes for RTÉ, TG4 and Virgin Media/TV3 including the ground-breaking IFTA-nominated documentary series, The Joy, the feature documentary, Lorg na gCos, which won a FOCAL international award in 2012, the IFTA-winning docusoap, Connected and the documentary series, An Ceoldráma, which received three IFTA nominations in 2014.

Cleona set up the production company, Inscéal, with writer/director, Colm Bairéad in 2012 and in recent years has focussed on the development of narrative feature films. She produced the Irish-language feature film An Cailín Ciúin which has become the highest grossing Irish-language film of all time. Itr is also one of the most critically and commercially successful Irish films of recent years receiving seven IFTAs, numerous international awards including the Grand Prix for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival 2022 and, most recently, a shortlisting for an Oscar for the Best International Feature Film at the 95th (2023) Academy Awards. 

Cleona was selected as one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow and also won the Film & Drama Award at the Tatler Women of the Year Awards in 2022.

BA Journalism, 2001