It was a Romanian immigration scam so daring that it made Britain's recent visa scandal look decisively bland.

A group of 41 desperate Romanians disguised themselves as a folk choir, complete with bogus international awards, then applied by post to take part in a little-known choral festival in Sligo.

So impressed was the priest who ran the international festival that he booked them for the opening night. The Irish consul, delighted that they knew of Sligo, happily handed out the visas.

But once the "singers" arrived in Dublin they vanished. Some applied for asylum, others are still on the run.

It was one of Ireland's biggest diplomatic blunders. But far from resigning, the consul is now starring in a film about the 1999 debacle, playing a conman trying to get illegal immigrants to Ireland.

Barry Mulligan, who has lived in Romania for 11 years, runs an advertising agency in Bucharest and as honorary consul handles visa requests for the Irish government. Entitled Sliding Dice, the film, which he co-wrote, is a fictionalised and humorous account of the scam, which places it in the context of Romanians' other option of reaching Ireland: by stowing away in containers known as the "suffocation express".

He said the gaffe was etched in Ireland's memory and deserved a film to immortalise it. The band called themselves Dorul, which means a desire for freedom. Romanians said the name at least should have alerted the authorities to something suspicious.

The film will hit the festival circuit later this year.

Mulligan made the film because he said the 30,000 Romanians in Ireland had received an unjust savaging in the press since they began arriving during the boom of the 90s. They were initially perceived as beggars and scroungers, despite the very high numbers of Irish couples who adopted Romanian orphans in the early 90s. He hoped the film would help audiences understand what drives a person to try anything to leave a country.

"I think Irish people appreciate this because it reminds us of the scams we tried to get into the US," Mr Mulligan said.

"The Irish have a natural respect for the underdog, for somebody who manages to get on with their life through adverse times. This was a pretty innocent scam and we think it was their own initiative."